Ever Nor Never Goodbye
by Sassassin
Summary: Thinking finding Nikita would mean the end of it was the stupidest thing they'd ever allowed themselves to believe. - Canon [Post season three finale]
1. Chapter 1

**Tagging: **Nikita, Michael, Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sonya. More to come, but secret for the element of surprise.  
**Ships: **Undecided. I'm going to see where the story takes me and I will listen to readers' input so let me know what you want!  
**Rating: **T for now, for blood and language. Will change to M later on for dark and twisted themes, sexual stuffs and more of the usual.

**Special thanks to Ayushi95 **for being an incredibly patient beta and really good at motivating people to write and improve.**  
**

* * *

| Chapter 1 | June 6, 2015 / Washington, DC — Fairfax, VA |

* * *

_I know you're out there  
And I know you care  
'Cause I feel you  
Like an angel watching over me_

* * *

Birkhoff peels out of bed at six am, grunting and muttering to himself as he combs through his hair and looks for his glasses. (He finds them on his nightstand. It's a nice change, for once not having to do a full-on search.) The tablet on his other pillow blasted him awake and he looks up to see several displays have lit up, the digital lights weaving together with the sun that falls through his unclosed blinds.

His mind used to be quicker; always running fast, always anticipating, always immediate reaction. But there hasn't been a reason to always be hyperaware of everything anymore, no more actual threat on his life or on that of those he cares about, so he has relaxed—it takes him a minute or two to realize not just any alarm has been triggered.

It's Nikita's.

When that thought _finally_strikes him though he settles behind his computer, fingers tapping away on his keyboard so furiously he might wake up Michael in the next room—and that is the only thing he doesn't want to do. He can handle chasing after these leads alone; scope them out, make sure they aren't traps or accidental triggers.

More than once he has woken up from nightmares that feature his best friend in some state of injury, covered in blood and beaten to pulp by the people that triggered his searching programs. They're echoes of the reality they lived in for a while. Michael has come too close to dying trying to find Nikita a few too many times.

So Birkhoff lies, says he's going out of town for a while to visit Sonya when truth is he hasn't seen her in over a year, and every time he goes out of town it is because maybe this time he will come home with Nikita.

He doesn't know why he keeps on doing it. He might not get aggressive or suicidal whenever those leads end up in nothing, but he, too, gets hope when that alarm sounds. Nikita might've not ever been his girlfriend or his fiancée but that doesn't mean he doesn't love her just the same. He has been devastated so often by now, resorting to praying to whoever is out there to _please_ bring Nikita back, please.

For a moment he contemplates not pursuing this, but then that thought dissipates because how can he not? If there's a chance, however small it is, that he can find her—he'll take it over anything.

So he reads up on what has happened and retrieves an address and then he's out the door, every sign of the lead erased from his computer, a note on the kitchen table that says he had to leave immediately because "Sonya might be in the hospital, I can't get a hold of her, I'll be back shortly – don't burn my house down while I'm away." and two guns missing from the armory.

His knuckles turn white and ache as he clenches his fists around the steering wheel and forces his car to go faster. Virginia isn't too far away from Washington, DC but it's still two hours, at _least_, and he isn't sure if Nikita is going to stay on the radar for that long… on the off chance that it is, in fact, Nikita.

Driving is boring. He never liked it, not before Division, definitely not during, especially not after. He prefers claiming shotgun and minding his business on his laptop or whichever other device of choice, and succumb to the world he believes to be his own.

He is more than accustomed to the typical American road.

He swerves to dodge cars, follows his navigation system through small towns to avoid traffic jams and police controls, and spends fifteen minutes on the phone with Alex.

(He forgot she is coming home today. He makes do of the limited internet access on the board computer of his car to arrange her flight from Moscow to Washington. There is a silence on Alex' end when he tells her he's off to Sonya again, and he fears she might be onto him—but then she tells him to give Sonya her best and he breathes a sigh of relief when the call disconnects.

He used to be bad at lying. So, _so_bad. He isn't sure if it's a good thing that now he is so, _so_great at it.)

He remembers how different it was the first time they thought they could find her. He hadn't been there with them, opted to man the computers, keep an eye on everything through cameras streamed from satellites, put Sonya and Akira to work on further establishing the new and improved ShadowNet. Ryan, Alex and Michael in a car and oh how fast they had gone, how sure they had been that they would find her.

But the car Nikita had taken to flee she had dumped on a parking lot of an airport and there were no images of her entering, of her taking a flight. He remembers sifting through hours and hours of footage just to catch a glimpse, only to come up empty-handed.

He got so unreasonably drunk that night, in some sketchy dive bar downtown that didn't card but fuck you, he is well over 21 anyway. (Why doesn't he feel like an adult? Well…)

There is another moment of doubt when he crosses the border to Virginia. He is an hour away from home, pretending to be headed for California, and maybe this will be his end. Maybe but unlikely but still, you know, _possible_. He'd hate to die with the last thing on his mind an ugly lie.

But then he realizes he hasn't only gotten better at lying, but he has also gotten better at fighting. He remembers shooting someone from The Shop in the head and knows that today is not the day Seymour Birkhoff dies. He has come too far.

So the doubt washes away, makes place for energy drink cravings that never stray far, and he wonders if it would be alright to stop to get some.

It probably isn't alright. He pushes up his speed a tiny bit more.

The minutes spent on the highway blur together and he properly tunes back in when it's about time he pulls into one of the exit lanes, so his navigation system tells him. With the voice of princess Leia, courtesy of Akira—best freakin' birthday present _ever_.

Twenty more minutes and he parks his car in front of a mental hospital. A building of white concrete and steel construction work, a minimal amount of windows and all-in-all a place he wouldn't want to be caught dead.

(Poor bastards that were.)

The shivers run down his spine when he gets out, even though the sun beams on his skin. There are several ambulances at the entrance, as well as police cars. It's swarmed with people and inside the building there are screams, piercing and impossible to be ignored.

Inside his veins his blood turns to ice.

He doesn't want to be here, but nevertheless he pushes through the uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach and grabs a badge from the glove box and tucks a gun in his waistband before he locks his car. (His grey and red Bugatti stands out tremendously among the caboodles filling the spaces.)

"Ezio McField, FBI," he says and flashes his badge before ducking under the tape. There is so much blood. He is used to it by now, but the smell still makes his head spin a little. His eyes move quickly, scrutinizing, but he asks the question anyway. "How many?"

"Four dead, several wounded." One of the deacons looks up from a body bag with a sad smile. "They didn't stand a chance, she knew what she was doing."

Birkhoff bends over one of the corpses and sees pale skin littered with dark bruises and dark liquid.

His heart lurches with a simultaneously pleasant and unpleasant jolt when he realizes that everything about this screams _Nikita_ and he hasn't been this close before.

"She?" He tries to sound anything but eager to know, but it's so hard.

"You remember when everyone thought president Spencer was dead? The patient that did this looked a lot like that woman…"

He does remember. He remembers it as if it were yesterday and not so many months ago.

"It can't be her," Birkhoff blurts out and it's too fast, so they look up at him from their crouched positions with a frown. He coughs and fidgets just a little. "I mean—she has been under FBI watch since the truth came out. In order to prevent that organization from framing her again, you know?"

He would die defending Nikita's innocence because he sees how they look, and she _didn't do it_, damn it, but before the conversation can spin out of control he is pulled aside—he guesses he's thankful. Or they should be thankful. He has grown a mean punch.

The man that talks to him is nothing out of the ordinary, but the look in his eyes… It's the same look Michael has sported for a long time now, one that tells of being tired and worn out.

"Josephine Le Sang," he says and hands him a file. Birkhoff's stomach churns when he hears the name, sees the picture. _Nikki_. "She escaped. We didn't know she was gone until she came back, covered in blood…"

The man looks across the courtyard, at the dead people and his face drops. (Birkhoff knows everything about losing people that work for you.) "Those four people were the ones tending to her. She went for them first, and then knocked everyone out that came in the way between her and the medicine storage. I have every reason to believe she stole drugs."

Birkhoff nods and makes sure everything is taken care of before he bolts.

Meanwhile all he can think is, "Nikki, what have you gotten yourself into?"

* * *

He tries to hold onto the fact that this is Nikita, that there is always reason behind her madness, that surely there must be a reason she was holed up in a_mental hospital_ for, according to her file, over four months. That there is a reason she took her daily dose of Adderall.

(He remembers the girl strung up on drugs, Nikita before she became the Nikita he knows and loves, the one that was brought to Division straight from death row, and he is so sick of remembering.)

But the truth sits uncomfortably in his body, and with every passing minute it swells and swells. He's afraid it'll suffocate him before he'll get to her.

_Josephine _only has one relative mentioned, her mother. How can a produced alter-ego have a mother? It's the only place he can think of going in this ditch of a town he has never been before.

The house he finds is huge, very elegant and very detailed, one of those houses that survived time and probably date back a few centuries. He can appreciate real estate. He has had to fix safe houses often enough to know that this particular house is worth a lot and one of a kind.

He pulls his gun from his waistband though because the house might look like it belongs to someone harmless, one of the first lessons ever taught to him was to never judge a book by its cover. Or a person by its house, whatever.

His fingers curl tight around the gun, the barrel wavering just slightly. (He thinks for a moment, _shit, I thought I got this under control_, and then he blames being so close to finding_her_it is normal he gets the jitters.)

The door gives way to a long hallway, a crystal chandelier dangling above his head. His steps are quick but calculated and he listens carefully, but no sound speaks of company, so he continues to the next room and—

He is surprised to see Amanda in the middle of the room, in the middle of a puddle of blood. He lowers his gun, but just slightly, and looks around. The room is a slightly different version of her office but he notes the similarities.

He moves closer to Amanda and sees there where she was hit by bullets.

"Not so invincible after all, are you?" he chuckles, dry and low, and spits for good measure. Horrible conversations over worse tea, a crushed hand and his bright mind threatened—he doesn't have fond memories of her.

He shoots a bullet through her head to make sure she is really, actually, completely dead. (There are bullets lodged between her ribs though and one pierced straight through her heart, he doubts she could stand up from this.)

And, because he's sure Michael and Alex will want to see this, he snaps a picture.

No other room in the house gives him quite as much satisfaction as that living room though, because none of them hold Nikita (he was foolish to believe), and he leaves the house shuddering from the visual of her chair of doom, needle squeaky clean but without a doubt used, because Amanda is an evil daughter of a bitch.

The neighborhood is quiet. It consists mostly of stand-alone-houses and he wonders if anyone has seen someone go in or out the house. He wants to ask, but first, because he doesn't like social interaction with strangers very much, he walks around the block.

And then suddenly she's there.

His heart breaks. He doesn't believe it. She stands in the middle of the desolate street, a gun at her feet. Her hair sticks to her neck and back with blood that might be her own and it might not be. Skin covered in bruises and wounds, bones that are bent in ways they shouldn't be bend—_ever_. Trembling. Silently crying.

He hasn't ever seen her like this.

"Nikki?"

She turns around so fast it has to hurt her, at least if his guess is correct and she has more than one broken bone, but her face doesn't show pain. It doesn't show anything. Just empty, so painfully empty. Her eyes are glazed over and she blinks slowly, one, two, three. Her eyelashes flutter like butterfly wings and it doesn't fit in the image of a girl that brought down a secret government unit, and killed so many people, and may or may not be wearing her enemy's blood as a skin coat.

He holds his breath, afraid, unsure—this is Nikita and he has never been good at knowing what goes on in her head. But then she slumps forward and he doesn't think, he just rushes to her and catches her before she can fall.

His gun falls to the ground with a sound that is lost on him as he is suddenly overwhelmed by everything Nikita. "I've got you," he whispers. She smells of blood and sweat and filth, of flowery perfume and something else, something that hurts because it reminds him of Division.

Her head falls to his shoulder and her voice sounds so void when she murmurs "nerd," and clings to his shirt, weeps in his neck, still trembling, eyelashes dusting her tears across his skin. She feels so small, and as he thumbs at her hips he feels how little she must have eaten the past—how long?

It has been well over two years since he last saw her, that fateful day she ran away. God knows what she has been through in all that time.

"Don't let me slip," she asks, _pleads_, and he nods, _of course not _but he doesn't say anything, just holds her—unable to fathom that she's back, solid, substantial, not a ghost or his imagination, not anything but flesh and bones and _real_, right there.

* * *

_Don't shut me out  
I'm an arson to myself  
Who can't put out the fires  
Until there's nothing left_


	2. Chapter 2

**Tagging: **Nikita, Michael, Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sonya. More to come, but secret for the element of surprise.  
**Ships: **Undecided. I'm going to see where the story takes me and I will listen to readers' input so let me know what you want!  
**Rating: **T for now, for blood and language. Will change to M later on for dark and twisted themes, sexual stuffs and more of the usual.

**I am _finally_**done with my semester finals, aka I have summer break now and updates will come more regularly! :)

You will notice that this chapter is a **flashback chapter**, which will be more common. Every other chapter will be a flashback one, actually, and that way we'll slowly figure out what happened in the two years that passed. Any confusion and inconsistency in the present chapters will eventually make sense.

* * *

| Chapter 2 | May 17 — June 29, 2013 / Cleveland, OH |

* * *

_I'd die to be where you are  
I tried to be where you are_

* * *

She loses the car the first chance she gets. Eyes filled with more tears, she hands the keys to a random passer-by and tells him to drive it to the parking lot of the nearest airport. He can do with it whatever he wants afterwards, she just needs it to show up on the radar as a decoy.

That's her plan. Losing the car, before they find her through the tracker planted somewhere amidst the machinery under the hood (Birkhoff's doing when Michael started taking his cars without asking too often); that's all there is to her plan.

Everything else is still loose thoughts unable to flock together to something coherent, bouncing through her head and slicing through her.

It hurts. Leaving them, her little dysfunctional family of battered and bruised people that have been through too much in too little time—it hurts more than any pain she has ever felt.

But it is necessary, so she leaves.

After losing the car she walks for two hours, dirt catching on her skin as dust whips up around her feet, and only when she's afraid she'll collapse of exhaustion does she start hitchhiking. Plenty a man stops for her. Tall and leggy and curvy, they'd be stupid not to.

Between Washington and Cleveland she breaks three wrists, all of men who tried to feel her up as a reward for taking her a few miles further up the continent.

She ends up in Cleveland and she doesn't know the city, doesn't know any place or any person, but it works because it doesn't remind her of anything. It doesn't bring back memories of old missions, or of certain pairs of eyes. No swamp green, no baby blue, no speckled blue.

Cleveland is neutral—it's perfect.

* * *

On the riverbank of the Cuyahoga River are several abandoned buildings that seem to stretch endlessly (but are actually only ten or so floors), reach up to the horizon. She picklocks her way into the empty loft of one of them and decides that yeah, it'll do.

It doesn't _really_ remind her of her loft in Chelsea, but it sort of does. It's spacious just the same, with hardly any pieces of furniture but the bare necessities, and she wonders for a while if she should invest in a few cans of paint just to cover up every patch of wall that screams at her, _you're back to square one_ and _you lost everything_.

She spends the night curled up beneath one of the windows, with the radio in the corner sputtering top forty songs, and pulls her sweater closer to her chest.

(If she closes her eyes and breathes in deeply, the sweater smells painfully much like home.)

In the morning she begins setting up her base camp. It's like before, when it was her rogue and solo and single-mindedly focused on bringing down Division. She dips into the remnants of her private funds to afford the purchases. Whitfield's money has lasted a while now, almost six years, and finally it had winded down to three digits. She'll need to start gaining some again.

She buys a laptop, lavender-colored silk sheets (because she'll need the sleep, and there's no better investment), food to last a week, some more clothes, a burner phone and enough items to make a pretty basic first aid kit.

It doesn't take much longer than two days to settle fully into the loft, but it still doesn't feel like home when she's ready, and every time she stands still long enough the loneliness creeps up on her.

How she wishes Michael could be there with her, warm and comforting and twirling her around through the open space.

Or Alex, always with a look of adoration in her eyes that doesn't fit, because Nikita is no hero or an older sister to love no matter what, but in Birkhoff's safe houses they watched rom coms together occasionally and it surprises her how much she misses that.

She wishes she could have Birkhoff's bad jokes and Owen's hugs—_Sam_. (She wonders how Sam is.)

She wants Ryan's sleepy, stubbly grin in the morning and Sonya's annoyingly _British everything_, which stopped being annoying like seven thousand years ago.

But she can't have any of those people, any of those little quirks she loves them for, so she makes a veggie shake in a kitchen that vibrates all the sound back at her, locking her in a seemingly eternal cocoon of _alone_, after dreamless slumber that had her waking up and reaching for someones that aren't there.

* * *

Cleveland might not have _her _people, but it does have people. Plenty of them. Enough to go around. Enough to make the city the seventh most dangerous one in the States.

It _shows_.

Nikita hates herself for it but when trying to track down The Shop doesn't work she falls back into her old habits; killing under assignment. Becoming a mercenary is the last thing she wanted, but she _does _need the money. And, to calm down her conscience, she only takes the jobs that have targets that deserve it.

Two.

She does two jobs; the leader of a drug cartel that smuggles mostly ketamine and meth, which is one of the most cathartic kills she has ever done, second to Percy probably, and a money launderer for some shady organization on the uprise.

If she can help prevent a new Division from rising, she sure as hell isn't going to pass on the opportunity.

Both times she gets paid in cash and doesn't get a proper look at the men assigning her the task but that's okay. She doesn't want to be recognized.

To balance out the bad she has done though, _and _because she doesn't sleep well anyway, she walks around at night, through the dark, stepping out of one shadow and disappearing into the next.

She follows a trace through alleyways that seems random but it doesn't feel that way, it grows into her, like muscle memory—she beats up men that try to rape women, breaks up fights and occasionally takes a hit to the stomach just to feel alive.

* * *

Somehow the city grows on her. She doesn't make friends, never goes to the same bar twice, hardly talks to people unless it's business or general ass-kicking; still, the accent and the smells and the streets grow familiar within a month.

Maybe she has been there for too long. Maybe she has been enjoying multiplying her money with the equally dishonorable tricking guys into betting their money in a game of pool with her—slurring speech, stumbling a little, giggling and twirling her hair around her finger, "I've never played this game before," and "your arms are so strong" and then she wins five hundred bucks from them, fair and square—a little too much.

When she realizes that she is slacking too much she puts her burner phone to good use with the three numbers on her flash drive she's willing to dial.

The first one is an old ally she didn't think would be willing to help her again, but she figured she could try. News, apparently, spreads fast and knowing she has kept to her word and brought down Division apparently wins her new respect. He is one of those people that's eager to serve _the _Nikita Mears that killed Percy.

(She makes a mental note for when she needs favors again.)

She loves her new KIA and the trunk is spacious enough to be turned into an armory slash infirmary.

They order in pizza and fill her loft with memories that aren't of her counting money, tending to wounds or biting her cheek until it bleeds to keep from wallowing in agony.

Then comes Cyrus. She takes him to the one restaurant she actually digs because they have amazing vegetarian food.

The setting is awkwardly romantic that night but he is easy to be around and it only gets easier when they crack open their second bottle of wine. In the pleasant buzz the candles and the wallpaper and the music fades to the background and all she sees is his smile and the solemn twinkle in his eyes whenever he catches her gaze.

She pays well for a load of guns and ammo and they sit against the front of her building with a brown bag passed between them. She hasn't been drunk in so long, but it feels nice.

He pretends not to see it when tears blossom in her eyes and she takes a moment to let them fall because it's been since _that day_, since that damn drive, that she has allowed herself to cry and it's both liberating and suffocating.

When she wakes up the next morning she has absolutely no recollection of how she got in her cot.

Cyrus is like a wake-up call and she invites Whitfield over. He offers her a log house in Canada, in the woods, close to a well-known hub for travelers of _their _world.

She takes it.

* * *

Nikita scans the room—the walls radiate warmth back at her.

Cleveland has treated her well. It's not the head start to a wild man hunt she expected, but exactly what she needed. She feels recharged now.

The space looks empty now her stuff isn't scattered around anymore. Everything is packed in the suitcase that stands at her front door, waiting.

She allows herself a minute to breathe in Cleveland and breathe out agony, and then she's out the door, hauls her luggage into the backseat of her Kia and gets going.

Six weeks. It's been roughly six weeks since she left them behind in downtown Washington and now she's traveling even further away from them.

(Only because Alex has become an even bigger media figure will she ever be able to track them down again, but she knows that by now those thoughts shouldn't be there anymore.)

She adjusts her blonde wig, checks her fake ID and visa, and then starts driving. Again.

[In Washington, they discover her pattern in Cleveland days too late. When they show up and get themselves beaten to within an inch of their lives for picking a fight in a bar, she's long gone.]

* * *

_Hidden companion  
Phantom be still in my heart  
Make me a promise that  
Time won't erase us  
That we were not lost from the start_


	3. Chapter 3

**Tagging: **Nikita, Michael, Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sonya. More to come, but secret for the element of surprise.  
**Ships: **Undecided. I'm going to see where the story takes me and I will listen to readers' input so let me know what you want!  
**Rating: **T for now, for blood and language. Will change to M later on for dark and twisted themes, sexual stuffs and more of the usual.

**Wootar16 **asked me if I could bring Sean back alive; I _wish _I could, but to keep the fic realistic, I sadly cannot. I can have him be missed though, which he is!

I'd just like to give a general shoutout to everyone that reviews—I reply personally to every registered account, I can't reply to guest reviews; but I love all of them equally and they make my day. So **thank you**.

And about the previous chapter: the **brown eyes** were a mistake, for some reason I thought Aaron Stanford had brown eyes, which, apparently, he doesn't.

* * *

| Chapter 3 | June 6, 2015 / Washington, DC |

* * *

___I took a walk around the world  
To ease my troubled mind  
I left my body lying somewhere  
In the sands of time_

* * *

Alex stretches when the cab whisks away and she stands in front of the house that's been her home for two years now, suitcase at her right, keys dangling from her left hand. The flight was long and the heat only makes her sleepier. She knows that sleep is only a few minutes away.

When the door swings open Ryan is the first to acknowledge her. With a grin he walks up to her and wraps her up in his arms. He smells like he always does, she realizes as she buries her head in the crook of his neck—Hugo Boss and _Ryan_, very distinguished and very personal.

She pokes a finger in his side to get from out of his steel grip.

(She doesn't _really _mind being hugged by him. She remembers a time when they were on anything but friendly terms. Shooting him is still one of the things she regrets doing the most, next to getting Sean killed and letting Nikita go.

They've come a long way since, and now he feels like an older brother. Things are, almost, good again.)

"Where's Birkhoff and Michael?" she asks when Ryan is not only the first but also seemingly the last to greet her. The house is unusually quiet.

"Seymour's visiting Sonya and Michael's… I actually don't know."

That is _never _a good thing to hear. She drops everything she's holding and runs around the set of white leather couches and through the door that leads to the grand staircase. "Michael!" she shouts, taking the marble stairs two at the time.

When they first got there, on their house hunt, the house had felt like perfection. It was spacious enough to hold trained assassins, technology addicts and a retired CIA analyst; enough rooms, a ginormous backyard, a big enough garage to allow a place to all of their cars. It had reminded her of her house back in Russia for a while before it became a place entirely in its own right.

And the way Birkhoff had decorated it, showing off the money he'd earned in weeks' time, because there was no more watching eye… well, it stopped looking like her childhood home a long time ago.

Now, however, as she rushes up the stairs she wishes it weren't so big.

She has crossed two hallways when she hears the distant thump thump thump and her heart rate slows down significantly. Michael used to disappear often, only to come back with bruises he refused to explain. Every time they couldn't get tabs on him they scattered in a wild goose hunt of sorts.

Knowing that he is _just _working out is a huge relief.

She halts on the threshold. Michael is pounding his fists into a boxing bag, a sheen of sweat covering his skin, muscles flexing right below the surface. (She holds her breath and watches for a little bit longer before she makes her presence known.)

"Oh, hey," he turns around and through his pants manages to mutter: "welcome back."

"Thanks, you don't have to hug me." She laughs but it fades quickly when she notices the weights thrown across the room. "Michael…"

"Don't say it."

"You were doing so good."

"I said 'don't say it'!" He comes threateningly close then and she can practically see the anger coursing through his veins, feels the heat waving off of him.

She sighs and her shoulders drop. "I'm sorry."

That _always _has the wanted effect because Michael's features soften, go from "set in stone" to "teddy bear". He fidgets in his place before tipping her head up and catching her gaze. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Just… go shower, okay? There's no need to practice until exhaustion. Not today. I brought souvenirs."

Michael leaves for the shower with a huff and she waits until she hears the clattering of water. Only then does she return, shouting to Ryan that everything is okay. Five minutes later she is finally back in the living room and drops face-first on the couch.

Her tiredness has completely vanished, whisked away by the fear that settled momentarily in the pit of her stomach.

"I wonder how many more years it's going to take," Ryan muses out loud and she looks up in time to catch a sad expression flicker over his face.

Two years. The last two years have been crazy. Working for the United Nations, she has done a lot of good things to even out the bad that she did when in Division, to wipe out the sour aftertaste of the Udinov name, the burning ruins left in the wake of her father's legacy. She has seen beautiful parts of the world and attempted to right the wrongs done to humanity.

But without Nikita, every victory feels like it's missing something. Alex constantly feels like the most important person in her life is missing, and it only took her a few days to figure out that it wasn't Sean she was missing.

(Although she _does _miss him. Especially at night, when she lays awake in a bed that is too big for just her, when she drowns in her sheets and wishes to have that protective arm wrapped around her waist back.)

The world feels scarier without her friend being there to stretch a wing above her head. Because she is convinced, more convinced than she has ever been, that Nikita has a set of invisible wings and a halo that illuminates the world when it's dark.

Her chest constricts when ice wraps around her again. She hasn't felt this way in a while, made a point of keeping thoughts about Nikita to a minimum because of this exact reason. If getting clean in that makeshift sauna five years ago was torture, then she can't find any word known to human kind to describe what happens when she thinks of Nikita and the gaping black hole she left behind.

She props herself up and sighs. "Yeah, me too."

* * *

There is sound of stumbling out in the hallway and both she and Ryan reach for a gun simultaneously. Then Birkhoff grunts loudly, curses below his breath and the two of them relax again.

Alex is the first to get up (Ryan seems pretty unwilling to), and she kicks her suitcase aside before she rattles off all the locks and swings the door open.

The world _stops_. She feels it hitch and then unhinge and then just stop; it stops spinning on its axis and she stands, head reeling, and then it all comes crashing and her throat produces a strangled whimper, close to nothing she thought humanly possible.

_Nikita_.

Tears are rolling down her cheeks mere seconds later and she leaps forward, holds onto Nikita like life depends on it despite—with shock she realizes Nikita is covered from, pretty much, head to toe in blood. She reeks of things she can't decipher and she is unconscious.

But all of it doesn't matter. Not right now. She trembles in her spot as she clings to Nikita and vows to never let go.

Suddenly arms wrap around her—no, around the both of them. Ryan's tears drop down to her shoulder, she vaguely registers, at least.

Her senses are utterly, undividedly overwhelmed by Nikita being back.

"What is happening out there?" Michael's voice startles her back to consciousness. At least, that's how it feels. When she steps aside, one arm still firmly locked around Nikita's (scarily thin) frame, Michael's facial expression drops.

He stands in front of them faster than she has time to process and lifts her up. The sounds he makes are _even more_ humanly impossible, and he's choking back sobs that rack his shoulders nevertheless when he holds her tight to his chest.

Birkhoff ends up being the voice of reason that ushers them all inside because staying outside won't do anyone any good, and then they flock together in the infirmary.

Nikita looks horrible, draped over the metal examination table with bright light throwing weird shadows over her, with dark red smeared across her skin, but Alex doesn't remember ever having been more happy to see a person than she does now, tear-filled eyes never straying from the woman in front of her.

* * *

They all spend the next two hours in the infirmary, helping out. It takes torturously long to scrape every last bit of blood from her body and out of her hair, but they take their time nevertheless because no one can know for sure what kind of injuries rest underneath.

And, not unexpectedly, every now and again they need to pause because nothing could have ever prepared them for how much this shakes them.

Because it does, it shakes all of them. Michael cries without shame, _the entire time_. Alex is reduced to a sniffling mess by the time they have cleaned up Nikita fully.

Her skin is tainted by purple and yellow, by the imprint of fingers on her hips and a bullet hole in her shoulder (Michael does a great job at removing it despite how completely heartbroken he looks), with her ribs sticking out because she looks like she hasn't eaten in weeks.

Birkhoff needs to break a bone in her arm _again _to set it correctly and the snap of the bone is lost in a piercing scream when Nikita jolts awake.

* * *

___After all I knew it had to be something  
To do with you  
I really don't mind what happens now and then  
As long as you'll be my friend at the end_


	4. Chapter 4

**Tagging: **Nikita, Michael, Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sonya. More to come, but secret for the element of surprise.  
**Ships: **Undecided. I'm going to see where the story takes me and I will listen to readers' input so let me know what you want!  
**Rating: **T for now, for blood and language. Will change to M later on for dark and twisted themes, sexual stuffs and more of the usual.

**Tsukanda**, thank you for your review, I'm sorry for putting you through pain, and I totally agree. I generally believe Amanda is the best thing ever written in a TV show even though she terrifies the living shit out of me, and I will ship Nikita/Amanda till the end of my days.

Meanwhile I am going **in hiding** for the shitstorm that might happen once y'all have read the end of this chapter.

* * *

| Chapter 4 | July 3 — 4, 2013 / Coquitlam, Canada |

* * *

_I'm going crazy and I've been awake for days  
My mirrors are stained with painted portraits of your face  
Don't leave  
Take it from me, you're my dirty disease  
(I can't take that, I can't take that)_

* * *

A flight of almost three thousand miles only to end up in the ruins of what used to be a high-end bar, Michael remembers the only time he has ever been here before, with _Percy_, when none of his friends had joined Division yet. When Birkhoff wasn't resident master nerd yet, when Nikita and Alex both still had lives—_crappy_ lives, but lives nonetheless.

He looks around the place, looks at the fuming remnants of the walls and at the plush ripped from the leather couches and his stomach churns with nausea and anger.

They fought their way through a horde of angry Canadians to see _this_? Nothing of its former grandiosity has survived the fight that raged the day before.

Michael steps forward, shattered crystal glasses scrunching under his boots like untouched snow. Nikita was spotted here. _Here_. If she instigated the fight—or worse, if she didn't, if she got caught up in it without any reason…

Is she still alive?

His system suddenly goes in overdrive, mind trashing about with questions, and he has no idea what to ask first so he blurts out a mix of it, several words twisted into something incomprehensible, and his two companions frown at him from opposite sides of the room.

Alex is crouched between what used to be a computer, wires and electric pieces around her in a digital fairy circle; Ryan is talking to the owner.

"We need to find her," he finally settles on, pressing the questions away. He'll mull over them on his own. He can't sleep anyway.

It's been like this for weeks, and he's slowly unraveling, growing more and more reckless as the days go by because not a moment he is spared of the God-awful mental images of Nikita dead somewhere.

He presses against his com, awakening the feed between him and Birkhoff and Sonya back at home. "She's not here anymore."

There is a bit of static over the line before, "Copy that. I'll check hotels in the environment."

* * *

The image of the destroyed bar haunts him as they comb through Coquitlam. Was Nikita in the fight? Was she the intended receiver of the bullets that were driven through the jukebox instead? Or did she flee before it got out of hand?

One of Birkhoff's tabs was triggered when, over a phone call, people discussed a woman that had been spotted at that exact bar that fit the picture of the alleged killer of President Spencer, and they waited too long. They should have taken the helicopter, but no, they booked a flight instead and—

Michael listens to the muttering of his friends and sinks deeper into self-loathing for letting the love of his life run away, and for failing to find her after that.

That feeling doesn't improve over the next few hours as they walk through street after street, visit hospitals to make sure Nikita hasn't been taken in somewhere, pass by police stations and hotels, and—nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

He ends up in a bar, one that hasn't witnessed a war on a tiny scale, one that still has standing walls and a working radio and bar tenders serving alcohol. Somewhere in the city Ryan sits holed up in a room, communicating with Birkhoff and Sonya (he thinks, he _hopes_, they need to find The Shop and Amanda and make them pay), but he sits in a bar with Alex and orders enough shots to get really fucking wasted.

Because that's what he needs. It's what he needs virtually every night, but he doesn't often cave.

Today, he does.

His eyes prick with tears when he's three shots of tequila down, the alcohol burning everything in its wake. It doesn't burn enough so he reaches for another.

Around him everything is not warm enough and too warm, Alex' presence hovering over him is both annoying and comforting. He has been in a state of unbalance since Nikita left, never settling in something fully positive or fully negative, but never reaching the tipping point either.

He comes dangerously close often, when he pummels his fists into an unknown man's face to be hit back just as viciously, _wanting _to be hit.

If he was suicidal when Elizabeth and Hayley were blown up in front of him, suicidal doesn't begin to cover how he feels now. But at least this time there is a tiny grain of hope and that's the one thing that has kept him from putting a gun to his temple.

That is an incredibly morbid thought and he throws back another shotful of booze to wash it away.

* * *

Behind the bar is a street, narrow but illuminated by street lights, and plenty of people pass through. It's good enough.

Somehow they _always _end up in the same position when he gets drunk. Somewhere, _anywhere_, fighting off men above their size and twice as strong, that's a guess, but still, anyways—men, pissed off and stronger.

Michael grins when he dodges a fist, but only because he's so drunk he is anything but stable on his feet, just swaying a little back and forth.

His head is blissfully empty.

It doesn't stay that way for long. Knuckles like bricks hit him on the side and his teeth dig through the inside of his cheek. A sharp pain shoots through his head at the same time as metallic invades his mouth. He doesn't realize it until a minute later but Alex is holding him up now and it's downright _embarrassing_, but he has lost his footing. He has been without it for weeks now, trying to find it again, slipping constantly and not caring who sees him fall.

Because that's all he's been doing—falling, and it sucks, and there's nothing he can do about it.

She yelps when she is hit directly in the face. Any man would be above hitting a girl, but these aren't. They never are. Alex always stays with him and takes hits because she refuses to let him be suicidally reckless by himself, and he should push harder to keep her at bay but he doesn't. He likes her company when he lets men break him a little bit more.

It prompts a faster reaction from him though, and he throws one of them against a wall. It's a low blow but he knees him in the groin because it assures more pain.

He doesn't realize the other man is just as much into playing dirty because the sudden pain in his arm comes from a blade that sliced right through his flesh.

He doubles over, holding his hand firmly over the cut, and allows the men to escape.

As blood flows beneath his fingers his breathing evens out.

"Michael?"

He puts a hand against the nearest solid surface to stand up and locks eyes with baby blue, enframed by skin that is slowly turning purple. It feels like another dagger to his gut, twisting deep and drenching everything in guilt guilt guilt.

"Let's go back, okay?"

She sounds so genuine, so _unbothered_ like she didn't just take a beating because he needed to feel pain other than the constant one that crashes through him like tidal waves. He nods. "Yeah."

Alex puts an arm around his waist to support him and he knows he shouldn't but he leans on her nevertheless, shuffles with her—they're going so slow, but he wouldn't want to go faster.

The night is quite beautiful.

* * *

Ryan is asleep. There are clothes neatly folded on a chair in the main area of their room and one of the doors is closed. Light filters through the skimpy curtains, enough for Michael to find the couch and fall down to it.

The left side of his shirt is drenched in blood and it is glued to his skin.

Alex doesn't even say a thing, just reaches for the first aid kit they always bring with them, and lifts the shirt off of him, pulling it off like a band aid. He bites on his tongue.

Alex looks more innocent than he remembers her being, and he feels like a bad person for dragging her into all of this. For not letting her _just _mind her United Nations stuff—that's terrifyingly important and a lot of things to do and whatnot, he figures, they never talk about it. Not _really_.

Michael is not the same Michael anymore so all intel goes straight to Birkhoff, self-proclaimed new team leader.

It's fine. It's whatever.

"Be still," she whispers, crouched between his legs, dabbing rinsing alcohol over the wound. He doesn't even flinch, just keeps his gaze on her. Curls colored like beach sand fall in cascading waves around her shoulders and her focus is intense, almost scorching the already bruised surface.

She has always reminded him of Nikita, but now, it hurts how much they are alike. He cherishes her though, sticks close to Alex because it's the last of Nikita he has left.

"Alex," he breathes, and she looks up, and they're close—so close. He can feel her breath on his skin, hot and sticky, carrying the scent of tequila and blood and something very raw and impossible to pin down to just one word.

Does she lean up? Does he lean down? He doesn't know but her mouth is warm and inviting. She tastes the same way she smells, tequila and blood and raw and impossible, and he pulls her in for more. There is something distantly Nikita about the way she feels pressed against him. His hand on her cheek, the other fisting into her tank top, he rolls back on the bed and pulls her with.

It's wrong but so right and he needs it, needs her, needs anything that keeps his mind from NikitaNikita_Nikita_, and it doesn't, it keeps doing that, even when Alex keens in the hollow of his neck and he trembles on top of her and without any clothes, without any barriers, so deeply intertwined, they haven't once been at a larger distance.

She curls up the moment they're done and pretends to be asleep even when he knows she isn't, and he sits on the edge of the bed for a _really _long time.

He throws up before he tries to catch sleep and when he glances for a second in the mirror, the reflection sends him spiraling into the worst he's ever felt.

* * *

In the morning they're piled into the rental car. Ryan is driving, the only one with a clear head. Michael rests his head against the window and squints against the bright sunlight.

The tension is so palpable even Birkhoff and Sonya can feel it, all the way back at DC.

"Okay," the first says, sounding ever so smug. "Who drunk confessed something embarrassing?"

Michael crushes his ear bud in his palm.

[They don't talk about Canada.]

* * *

_____My flat line inhibition  
Is my ammunition  
I'm just fighting to get by  
Just spit me some direction  
I'll be your infection  
How could you leave me behind?_


	5. Chapter 5

**Tagging: **Nikita, Michael, Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sonya. More to come, but secret for the element of surprise.  
**Ships: **Undecided. I'm going to see where the story takes me and I will listen to readers' input so let me know what you want!  
**Rating: **T for now, for blood and language. Will change to M later on for dark and twisted themes, sexual stuffs and more of the usual.

I'm sorry but I was _super _amused by how badly people freaked out over Michael and Alex, and just to assure you all, I'm not bringing them back for a while, if at all. But I can't promise anything, either. I take your comments serious though and considering Mikita and Nalex seem to be the most demanded ship, you'll definitely get some goodness for them—eventually.

To the **guest reviewer**, your words were definitely appreciated, and I hope I won't disappoint—but it'll take a while before Nikita will find out, and at the end of the chapter you will all know why.

On another note, I got back the results of my exams and it was _bad_, like, **_really__ bad_**, so I might be a little pre-occupied all summer studying for retake exams but I promise I'll try my damnedest to update regularly!

* * *

| Chapter 5 | June 7, 2015 / Washington, DC |

* * *

_If I could just see you  
Everything would be alright  
If I'd see you  
The darkness would turn to light_

* * *

Ryan used to be a pretty optimistic guy in a world that was anything but. Even if his job had been to discover flaws in the system and track down people that caused them, he had been optimistic. He managed to stay optimistic when his mother got cancer, when their local church burned down, when he had to pretend to be _dead _and had to live knowing his mother thought so—his poor mother, who had been through _so _much.

He stayed optimistic.

Because he knew there was something he was doing it all for. When he worked for the CIA, he worked knowing he was making the world a better place, or at the very least a safer one. When his mother got cancer and his tow was struck by tragedy, he never lost faith and he believed—he prayed and he believed, and he knew everything was going to be alright.

Then Nikita came and he believed in _her_, she became the embodiment of his faith and she became his religion.

When she ran away, when she didn't come back, he tried so hard to stay optimistic and he fooled himself and everyone else into believing he was still the same old Ryan Fletcher, bright beyond imagination and annoyingly optimistic.

He stands in front of the bathroom mirror, combing his fingers through still damp hair, and realizes he's shaking because he hasn't been optimistic in a long time. The blue of his eyes stares dull back at him in the reflection because he's slowly losing it, himself—he's losing everything.

The last two years have been so long, they felt like they wouldn't ever end, and he thought that when they found Nikita it would all be over. He thought when he would see her again, when he could hold her hand and make sure no harm came her way he would go back to being optimistic. He thought he could believe in things again.

He puts on his robe and ties it around his waist. Most of his moves are on automatic pilot as his mind races with thoughts that cut sharp. What's going to happen now? He spent four months proving her innocence and then twenty months longer in the aftermath of that, in the aftermath of her not coming home to them, of her not showing up when the coast was clear…

Sure, there had still been Amanda, but they had all expected to see her appear when The Shop was exposed. They could have taken on Amanda together…

…_why hadn't they_?

It's hard to be optimistic when everything forces you not to be.

He waits in the door frame and looks at Alex, who seems to have cried herself to exhaustion and then to sleep—she lies curled up on the carpet next to the bed. In the free space of the bed sits Michael, propped up against the headboard, one of Nikita's hands in his own.

Ryan sees how careful the touches are, sees split knuckles and vague red on her digits. He thinks he doesn't want to know how she got that.

Birkhoff sits in the corner of the room, in a chair with his tablet in his lap. He looks more tired than any of them, and now it all makes sense. How often would he have lied to them, said he was going to Sonya when—when yeah, what?

It could have been so nourishing to his hopes and optimism if he had known that there were leads, that she hadn't completely vanished off the radar, but he can't tell Birkhoff that because he brought her back and no one else had managed to do that.

Ryan sinks down in the only other free seat and clasps his hands together, soundless prayers rolling through the cavity of his mouth, sticking to his tongue that pokes out to wet his dry lips, and he wonders if any prayer at all could ever help them.

Then he thinks that it's been so long since he last prayed, and that last time was in the church in his hometown that burned down, when he wasn't a CIA analyst yet and his mother still knew he was alive.

He doesn't easily get the urge to cry, but now he feels like weeping.

* * *

It takes a while but eventually both Birkhoff and Michael give into the almost aching fatigue that is seared into their bones and into their muscles. Ryan feels it too. It pulls at him, makes everything feel so heavy—but he figures that either the shower helps a tremendous amount, or he is more used to the feeling.

(He assumes the latter is definitely applicable to Birkhoff, who hasn't spent much time not riding on the high of some energy drink. Michael… he actually has no idea.)

Now he is the only left awake and that feels terrifyingly responsible just like it feels liberating and peaceful. He rises from the floor—no, he pushes up from it, stumbling in his lack of elegance and swiftness, edge of his robe flailing about around his ankles. His steps are light and he makes sure not to accidentally trip over Alex' curled-up form.

Nikita looks horrible. It might be the angle of the light, but he knows better than to cling to that hope. (In the past, he would have. He would have clung to it until he smiled again.) His fingers trace along her jaw and everything aches even more, the feeling reverberates within him and crushes everything it touches.

The strongest person he ever met—she looks like a fragile _child _right then and there, bruised by too many a person, the fight in her shattered and died.

"I'm so sorry, Nikita," he whispers, digits setting at her neck where he can feel her pulse thrum steadily against his touch.

This should be comforting. This is supposed to make him feel _better_. But silent rage courses through his veins like war stories, like a mechanical beat or a lone trumpet, because he doesn't feel the slightest bit better. Because the prize they paid is much bigger than they anticipated, and how are they supposed to come back from this? How are they supposed to live with themselves knowing they allowed _this _to happen to the one person that never gave up on them? If they had just tried harder, looked longer…

"Ryan?"

His heart skips a beat and that's how long it takes for him to realize that it's not Nikita, the voice he hopes to hear again, _needs _to hear again—instead, it's Alex. He hears her get up, hears her body sputter in protest and then he feels her warmth against his back and her hair against his neck.

"She's still not awake?"

"Nope."

"It's been hours."

"She'll wake up, right?"

The fact he can't reply, physically unable to, not because he doesn't know but because he can't hope for it, hurts like a kick to the face and the silence lasts until Ryan gives up too and hoists himself onto the window-sill to sleep.

* * *

He is startled awake by a sudden booming of noise, voices blossoming from the silence that has been tangible since they settled in this room, and he squeezes his eyes against the light but he still _sees_, and he sees a lot. Too much to take in all at once so he prioritizes and his sight lands on the woman in the bed, wicked grin and eager hands and a look on her face that he can't quite decipher.

But those eager hands… they lead to the next thing to take in. Because she isn't just grabbing for things, for other hands actually, but she's doing something with them. She's guiding Michael's hands under her shirt, murmuring something below her breath like a chant that he can't hear. He needs to be closer.

It is then everything strikes all at once. Alex looks completely horrified and Birkhoff sits at the edge of the bed and wails, tapping away furiously on his tablet. The room is drenched in anxious tension.

He props up and wonders how many hours have passed. Light falls through the window so it must have been a few, five at least, and he knows that's not enough to constitute a healthy amount but special situations demand priorities—oh, he knows about priorities. His life _hinges _on his ability to prioritize. (He thought it hinged on an optimistic setting but that was proven inaccurate.)

"Michael, please," he hears her murmur, and he inches closer to be able to look at her properly.

At first sight, she looks surprisingly okay. There is still something distinctly _off _about her, maybe something about that aforementioned wicked grin or maybe something about the frantic look in her eyes that doesn't _match_, but it's something and it makes him queasy because this isn't Nikita and is he the only one that notices?

Michael looks in distress, but not for the same reason. He is torn between allowing his ex-fiancée to get intimate and stopping this before it gets out of hand, as far as Ryan can see.

"Michael, I'll do _anything_," she breathes, eyes never straying from the man. "I need it."

There is the telltale sound of a bottle of pills being shaken when Birkhoff scoots further to the edge of the bed and it takes all but three seconds before there's a scream (it comes from Alex), and someone leaps out of bed (that would be Nikita) and then Birkhoff's on the floor, pinned beneath a still surprisingly agile and strong Nikita.

"Give me my medicine," she spits and she…

The silence is deafening when she doesn't hit him, or chokes him, but _kisses _him. And then she's gone with the bottle of pills and running into the hallway. Ryan doesn't accelerate quite fast enough but Alex does, and he sees a flash of tears in her eyes before she bolts out of the room.

There's a strangled cry next, a dull thump, Michael is out the door and Ryan pulls Birkhoff to his feet before they follow.

Hadn't the situation been the situation it is, Birkhoff would have made a pervert reaction of the catfight/girls in bikinis in the mud variety.

"Nikita, _calm down_," Michael shouts, standing between the two women. Alex holds the bottle of pills to her chest, and Ryan has a sudden flashback to when the news came out Alex had started using again, and he had had such a hard time trying to figure out why Nikita had been so angry beyond belief, but it clicks into place.

"You're using again?" Alex asks incredulously, and her voice wavers with the tears that are flowing. "Nikita, _you're using again_?"

And Nikita, she… she doesn't reply. She just stares at Michael with big eyes and at the pills with big eyes and Ryan might very well not be there.

Alex is pulled comforting arms by Birkhoff, who takes both the girl and the pills away, and Michael has Nikita pinned against the wall because she was ready to leap after her.

"_Nikita_, look at me."

Nikita's eyes narrow to slits and she eyes the man hovering in front of her. "It's _Josephine_."

Ryan doesn't know it just yet then, but his optimism isn't just broken, it isn't just beyond repair—it is splintered.

* * *

_And I will walk on water  
And you will catch me if I fall  
And I will get lost into your eyes  
I know everything will be alright  
I know everything is alright_

* * *

**Dun dun dun.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Tagging: **Nikita, Michael, Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sonya. More to come, but secret for the element of surprise.  
**Ships: **Undecided. I'm going to see where the story takes me and I will listen to readers' input so let me know what you want!  
**Rating: **T for now, for blood and language. Will change to M later on for dark and twisted themes, sexual stuffs and more of the usual.

I am doing something the show should've done a _long _time ago and that's **dig into the past** **of our favorite nerd**. Mind you, I know it is unlikely that the show would go with something like this, but I tried to figure out why exactly Birkhoff had such a lack of respect for authorities unless it came down to his self-preservation.

Also, if you don't follow me on Twitter yet, you definitely should. Aside from occasionally laughing maniacally over plot twists that no one likes (exhibit A: Malex in chapter four) I post little teasers and spoilers, I answer questions and in general I just talk to anyone that wants to talk to me. So yeah, that's that.

One last thing: I suggest you listen to the Titanium cover by **Collin McLoughlin**. It's what I listened to while writing rather than David Guetta's original.

* * *

| Chapter 6 | July 7, 2013 / Washington, DC |

* * *

___I'm bulletproof, nothing to lose  
Fire away, fire away  
Ricochet, you take your aim  
Fire away, fire away_

* * *

"This is _impossible_," Ryan sighs from where he sits, head propped up on his hand, a table full of paper stacks in front of him. They've been at this ever since they returned from Canada, the four of them—Michael has been holed up in his room and refuses to come out for anything but food.

Even if they had help of their friend, though, it wouldn't move any faster. The Shop knows what it's doing. They don't leave any trails, they don't hand out any clues.

Birkhoff groans, closes his eyes to try and think better, more focused. Usually it doesn't take them this long to come up with anything. They've been trained to think fast, to fly by the seam of their pants—they haven't been doing that at all.

The Shop. He rubs his fingers over his temples, a soothing rhythm that counters the upcoming headache because he isn't used to think beyond the extend of which commands to type into ShadowNet (which is still in process of being built up, honorable mention) or which sort of spy-fi toy to—

"That's it!"

His friends look up with big, curious eyes that would amuse him any other time—_no_, it actually amuses him then, too. He chuckles, shaking his head as he gets up from his chair and walks over the part of his working station that is set up in the living room for quick access.

He rummages through one of the messy drawers, shoves aside loose wires and unfinished gadgets to come up with a small circle of metal that feels heavier in his palm than he remembers it being.

"Remember this?"

Alex gets a gleam in her eyes when she does, indeed, recognize what he's holding and she catches it when it's thrown at her, finger stroking along its smooth side as they discuss their MO for this and Birkhoff is proud—that, ladies and gents, is _exactly _how his toys should be treated.

* * *

"I suggest you don't storm in all 'I am Alexandra Udinov, look at my bling,' like previous time," Birkhoff chuckles, tapping away happily on his keyboard. Several images flicker over his screen, one security camera footage that points straight at where Alex is standing rather awkwardly among diplomats that have been part of the game for much longer than ten minutes, and ID tabs of the people around her.

They need to check if Alex' presence aren't any of Amanda's minions at all times. The drawback of going public. Michael would be of such good use right about now, but when Sonya went to ask him if he wanted to help apparently he closed the door in her face.

Ass.

"Never liked him," he mutters below his breath as he pulls open a series of colorful digits flashing up and down in rows, a log-in screen in the middle that looks at him with a taunting sneer.

"Oh, just you wait," he threatens, leaning forward and pressing the tip of his finger to the screen. "Just you wait."

Behind him, Sonya giggles. (Somehow she still finds it endearing.)

It takes a while, the waiting, and Birkhoff isn't the most patient guy there ever was so he lets his discontentment be heard; but eventually Alex does manage to get away from the troop of overly eager grey suits.

"Be careful, Alex. You're going in blind," Sonya whispers, afraid someone that shouldn't hear them actually does, and Seymour wonders why because she should know better than this. She's been Division for how long.

…he suddenly realizes he has no idea how long Sonya had been in Division. (He scribbles it down on a post-it to ask some other day.)

"What she said," Birkhoff hums, grin stretching wide, hidden behind scruff of quite a few days. "Damn UN and its secure protection. Find a computer terminal and be gone. Asap."

"Copy that."

In bathed breathes Sonya and Birkhoff listen in on Alex. For a while it's her footsteps scuffing over the carpet and her even breathing, then there's a faltering moment where they're both driven to the very edge of their seats.

When Alex finds a terminal they smile to one another and Sonya visibly relaxes. Birkhoff doesn't allow himself to do that until the remote control activates and Alex stands safely back in the front conference room.

* * *

_Little Seymour, only ten years old, tiptoed down the hallway. The house around him was asleep. The floorboards creaked where his weight came down and every time a sound rippled through the silence he halted, breath held back for one-two-three._

_He passed by Raleigh and Sierra's room just fine, and past Aiden's. But then came his father's and his heart leaped up to his throat, coursing venom up to his brain._

_The door creaked, too. He held his breath as he walked in further, pausing after every step to make sure his father was still sound asleep. Step, pause. Step, pause. Step, pause._

_When he reached the desk he wasted no time in unlocking the top drawer with the key he'd snatched away right after dinner, and lifted the laptop carefully out of it. As fast as he could maintaining his step-pause tactic he got out of the room, only taking in a deep breathe when he was halfway between his sisters' and his brother's room._

_He launched the laptop and watched his own computer screen as he waited, colorful digits spinning 'round and 'round, framing a log-in screen that had kept him locked out for days now—but no more._

_When was his father going to realize "go to sleep, Seymour" didn't cut it?_

* * *

Birkhoff doesn't often think about when he was a little boy. He sorts through all this brand new information, all the United Nations stuff that can be accessed from the headquarters of the human trafficking branch, which is still a hell of a lot more than they had, and swallows away the lump in his throat that formed.

Somehow, those moments of deadly fears of being caught trying to break through the protection that kept him from accessing internet were the highlights of his childhood and there is something inexplicably wrong with that.

He starts the procedure to cross-match everything he has on ShadowNet with everything on the newly-accessed server and leans back.

His late father's face floats vivid in front of his mind's eye now he conjures it. The hazel eyes that once shone with happiness stare empty back at him. Not once has he told anyone about then, about how life as he knew it ended when his mother died and with it, every positive emotion their father had felt for him and his siblings.

It's something Amanda tried to dig out of him plenty of times with that psychobabble she's so good at, but he praises whoever's watching over him and thanks his lucky stars because it would have been like ripping stitches out of a wound if he had.

"Seymour?"

He is glad Sonya picks that moment to speak up because his thoughts wandered a little too close to the edge. It feels like resurfacing when he blinks, not in the house that had always smelled vaguely like orange trees anymore but back in Washington, in front of his computer. "Yeah?"

"We have a match."

* * *

_He watched with teary eyes as Sierra hoisted her duffle bag onto her shoulder and curled her fingers tight around her bundle of keys. She didn't grant their father another look, but she did look at him. Her smile, all fake bravado and forced self-confidence, dropped when she noticed the tears threatening to fall._

_"Momo," she sighed, and the nickname hadn't been used in a while so it stung. Sixteen now, he still hadn't processed anything, and he couldn't believe the last person he loved was about to leave him as well._

_"No, don't," he bit, but it sounded weak with how much his voice shook. "Don't—"_

_"I'm sorry." She put a hand on his shoulder and kissed his hair. It's what their mother used to do and it was so unfair because it froze him in the spot, she knew it would, and he was unable to move as she fled. Because that's what she did. She fled._

_Their father, running for senator in their state for as long as Seymour could remember, was one step closer to succeeding. The passive abuse, the silent torment—taking away everything they loved and making life impossible so they would leave voluntarily, because kicking his children out would simply be catastrophic for his career… Three children down, one more to go._

_Seymour turned around and ran for his room, promising himself that not only was he going to be a perpetual thorn in his father's side and promising himself he was never going to care for anyone ever again._

_That only ever ended up in hurt._

[Eighteen years later his new attempt at a family is falling apart but he'll be damned if he lets everyone leave him again.]

* * *

_And I will walk on water  
And you will catch me if I fall  
And I will get lost into your eyes  
I know everything will be alright  
I know everything is alright_


	7. Chapter 7

**Tagging: **Nikita, Michael, Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sonya. More to come, but secret for the element of surprise.  
**Ships: **Undecided. I'm going to see where the story takes me and I will listen to readers' input so let me know what you want!  
**Rating: **T for now, for blood and language. Will change to M later on for dark and twisted themes, sexual stuffs and more of the usual.

**Sorry** it has taken so long for me to upload a new chapter. And yes, rewritten version was uploaded! :D

This one goes out to all the Nalex shippers among my readers, but in special **Ayushi95 **and **uptightcrankyshadownet **because they're fabulous human beings.

If you're into the** music** that I steal lyrics from for every chapter, I made an online playlist so you can listen to that if you want. :D /floodlight/ever-nor-never-goodbye

Now on to the chapter, you've waited long enough!

* * *

| Chapter 7 | June 8 — 14, 2015 / Washington, DC — Chelsea, NY|

* * *

_Nothing goes as planned, everything will break  
People say goodbye in their own special way  
All that you rely on and all that you can fake  
Will leave you in the morning, come find you in the day_

* * *

Alex is convinced it's some kind of effed up karma or something like that, feels like she's to blame because she set the example, didn't she? She relapsed not one but _three _times—before Division, during 'Division' (the new one, at least), and then after Division; though a point has to be made that Nikita can't even _know _that.

Except if anyone would be able to keep tabs on her life even without being around, it would have to be this woman. (And Birkhoff. Definitely Birkhoff, too.)

This incredible, wonderful woman that has a knack for making her world crash and burn in all the right ways.

This incredible, wonderful woman that is _gone_, so very gone it shatters the pieces of her shattered heart.

* * *

Josephine. _Josephine_. Alex doesn't know the details of this persona constructed over long hours in Amanda's office; she never felt the need to ask anyway, especially because she would notice an almost terrifying gleam drape over the beautiful brown of Nikita's eyes whenever it was mentioned.

But from the conversation between Birkhoff and Michael, after they have Nikita back asleep and strapped to her bed, she figures out a few things.

For instance, Josephine was the alter ego there to detach her from what was happening. Alex knows what it feels like—she remembers her very first mission, how she had been served up as something very close to what she used to be in a previous life, meat to pose as a distraction. God, she'd hated Division and everything it stood for even more that day.

Picturing that Nikita had been sent on missions like that one, for an extended period even, having sex to get in good graces or the right position… Nauseous, that's what it makes her.

Josephine had been based on a small part of Nikita's past that was darker than most but no one but Amanda had ever heard the full story of; not even Michael did, apparently. Alex tries to picture going by _Sasha _to do the same thing and tastes the bile at the back of her throat.

Josephine had been what had made Nikita capable of doing it without wanting (or needing) to stab herself. According to Michael, she'd never wanted to be that person again. (He keeps wailing "I promised her, I promised her," and yeah, that's not heartbreaking or anything…

It is.)

She doesn't know the details yet she can tell with certainty that Nikita wouldn't ever willingly go by the alias. She's the first to make the connection that this must be one of Amanda's mind tricks—and somehow, that doesn't help a bit.

* * *

When she had been under Amanda's influence she'd had no idea it _wasn't_, in fact, her own doing, she had still felt like herself—she had still _been _herself. She figures that it must be the same for Nikita, that somewhere inside that body and inside that (sometimes brilliant, more times reckless) mind must be the woman they all know and love.

And hate at times.

So Alex has been visiting her whenever she's awake, sitting on the edge of the bed and talking to her. She talks about the nicer parts of the past two years. She tells stories about the United Nations and what it's like to be a diplomat,—

_"I'm still not really used to the pencil skirts," she admitted, chuckling as she rolled her eyes. "Of course that would be something I do. I don't have difficulties feeling useful in there, but I do have difficulties getting down with the dress code."_

—and about the places they've been, how much other continents have to offer and what an absolute pleasure it was to visit Paris for the first time.

She bites back most of the things that nag at her from a shadowy corner of her brain while she talks because there's more.

She wants to say that had she been able to tell Nikita about her days when she slumps in the couch after long hours, had she been able to tell Nikita about her trips when she comes home—all of it would've felt so much better than it already did.

She wants to say how much more she would've enjoyed said first visit to Paris if she could've eaten croissants in the little café on the corner of their hotel's street with Nikita, how much they would've laughed shopping for berets and how magic standing on the Eiffel Tower could've been.

She doesn't tell any of that, the things that would make Nikita at least smile that fond, little smile that made Alex giddy every time—she _does _tell how she relapsed again, not drugs this time but an addiction nevertheless, an alcohol dependency that started when she didn't want Michael to be alone during his most self-hating moments and carried on beyond that, to the point where she needed a drink or she wouldn't get through the day. She speaks of karma and self-loathing and "I'm so sorry I disappoint you, _again_," because then maybe Nikita'll feel less bad about relapsing herself... Maybe then Nikita will resurface...

But nothing.

Alex leaves a little more broken every night.

* * *

She hates that despite Amanda being very, _very_ dead she still manages to make their lives a living hell.

* * *

Nikita—Josephine...? Alex isn't too sure, and that makes her feel so unstable. She needs to live in a world where Nikita exists and she's there; her body is, at least... but it's not enough.

Anyways, that woman doesn't seem to mind her visits much. Seems mostly indifferent to them. Listens her out and doesn't say a word. Same for Birkhoff, who has taken to bringing her food and spoon feeding her. She hardly even graces them with as much as a look.

It's nothing close to what they'd want, but better at least than what Ryan gets. Whenever he comes into the room she screams bloody murder. It's the strangest thing but she trashes about on the bed and looks so genuinely _scared _of him whenever he's and it's _just_ him, and Alex' heart breaks for him because she was his friend and now nothing seems to be left of that.

Whenever Michael comes in the room, things get interesting. Weird, but interesting.

They all hear her go through her withdrawal symptoms (the nights are the worst), they all see her decaying slowly in front of their eyes, withering away even further—but so far, she has only tried through _Michael_ to get to her pills. The filthiest things fall from her lips when he's within ear shot, she reduces herself to every bit of a submissive little lap dog, she plays into his feelings for her and that leaves them wondering why Amanda kept that part of Nikita's actual self in: her love for Michael. Why?

It's never easy to get Michael out of that room because he knows this is not Nikita, he's as smart as the rest of them, but he looks so much like the love of his life that sometimes it must be hard for him to stay grounded.

Alex knows the feeling but she's not entitled to it, anyway.

* * *

June thirteenth. Nikita's eight day back. Alex paces through the kitchen, head buzzing unpleasantly. Everyone is still asleep, as far as she knows, though she can't be sure—she feels like she's never sure anymore. Nikita being around but so far away at the same time has made her cravings so much more difficult to bear, but if Nikita's still in there somewhere, Alex feels it to be her duty to be on best behavior.

But she hasn't been sleeping well, _at all_, even worse than usual; she hasn't been able to get much food down, or to get her regular amount of hours of training in… life has changed so much in the past week, not for the better—and the lack of alcohol, the lack of feeling good is so apparent, like a car crash she's passing by and can't help but look at.

So she opens the fridge, the cold slashing into her face with vengeance, and her fingers closing around the collar of a bottle of beer feels like coming home. (She knows it shouldn't feel like that, but it does.)

She holds the cap in her clenched fist to dig it into her palm, some sort of punishment for giving in, as she tips it back and loses herself again until one cap turns into a few littered over the counter and she's blissfully unaware of the pain rippling through her that's been there since Nikita…

Nikita.

A lazy smile stretches across her face when she cleans up her mess, empty bottles falling to pieces in a bit of a blur and she forgets to count how many—she never knows how many on her binges, anyway. She just knows she feels good, a little loopy and a little wobbly, but _good _and that's a welcome change.

She retrieves the bottle of pills Nikita's been yearning for. They can both feel good, together, she figures.

Nikita's awake when Alex walks into her room, closing the door behind her. Well, Josephine. Whatever.

She hasn't ever been more eager to have Alex in her room as she is now, ears perked at the sound of pills ticking to the insides of the plastic bottle.

"Alex." A current of electricity thunders through Alex' limbs because she hasn't heard that voice say her name in too long.

She screws the cap off and pours the pills into her palm, counts three and slips them past chapped lips to a tongue that brushes over her digits in a silent thanks, she thinks, and then Nikita's straining against the chains that keep her to her bed, so close, and Alex is counting lashes that flutter against pale cheeks because formerly empty eyes spark with something she doesn't want to acknowledge.

And then they're kissing, and it feels like Michael all over again, except Alex's been wanting this forever and Michael only felt like a step closer, and it's _so _wrong to give in but she does, hand settling against the side of Nikita's neck where she feels her heartbeat speed up just slightly.

It doesn't last long, exhaustion and so close to being drunk winning out over the euphoria that takes too long to settle, and the last thing she hears is "thank you." Her stomach churns.

* * *

She dreams of Nikita being back, warning her about Amanda's tricks and Adderall and brain needles through a haze that makes her smile widely. When Alex wakes up she doesn't remember a thing except for the vague knowledge that her dream might've not been a dream and that it's of the most importance.

She forgets that, too, before she's even dragged herself out of the room of the sleeping beauty.

(Ick. Her stomach finally flips over and she bolts to the nearest restroom.)

* * *

It's the next day, in the morning, that she goes to find Birkhoff and tells him the plan she's been thinking up for days now. Because they can't do this. It's killing them, slowly but surely, one agonizing minute at a time. It's killing them all and it needs to stop. It needs to be over.

"How do you even plan on making contact?" Birkhoff asks, huffs actually, rolling his eyes but not averting them from the screen to look at her. He's running a search on Shadownet that undoubtedly will come up blank.

"I might have an idea."

* * *

At nine am that day, every radio station in the world suddenly plays _Midnight in Chelsea _by Bon Jovi and it's genius if not really fucking stupid, and while Birkhoff looks into a new place to move to because if this stint is traced back to them they'll end up in jail after all, Alex boards a plane to Chelsea.

She's a little proud of refusing a drink on the plane.

* * *

She watches with tired eyes as time ticks closer and closer to midnight on her father's watch, firmly attached to her right wrist—it has been for years. All she can think is "_please_," because there's much to "please" about.

Please understand my message.

Please care enough to show up.

Please help.

Please.

All she can do is wait, though, wait and pray. Pray that help will come, that it'll be enough to bring Nikita back. She waits and prays, in the shadows of a building that's tainted by a fire that raged a lifetime ago, and Alex presses back memories because she can't allow herself to think of the "before Division", when things were relatively easy and innocent, for as far as the two of them had been able to be easy and innocent.

A mini version of herself is beating away tangible, solid versions of memories and she's looking at it as from an audience tribune when footsteps appear too close to her for her heart to stick to its regular beating.

She swallows a curse and instead—"Hey Sam. Thanks for coming."

The smile on his face when he steps into the light of a street-lamp is eerily familiar.

* * *

_Oh, you're in my veins and I cannot get you out  
Oh, you're all I taste at night inside of my mouth  
Oh, you run away 'cause I am not what you found  
Oh, you're in my veins and I cannot get you out_

* * *

**Was it who you wanted/expected it to be? (Dun dun dun.)**


	8. Chapter 8

**Tagging: **Nikita, Michael, Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sonya. More to come, but secret for the element of surprise.  
**Ships: **Undecided. I'm going to see where the story takes me and I will listen to readers' input so let me know what you want!  
**Rating:** T.

Today something important happened. I **figured the story out**. And with that I mean, I've figured out what the next chapters are going to be about, I have finished the timeline I started a week before I uploaded the first chapter on here, and I am currently working out minor details in the ending but... alas, the end is in sight.

Now, the **good news** comes in a twofold: 1) I have planned for there to be fifteen chapters. That means after this one there's seven more chapters, so it's not like it's ending right now. 2) I am cautiously starting to think about the next multi-chapter story I'll be writing. It will be Nikita again. So even when this is done, there's a chance I won't be out of your life fanfiction-wise. :)

Buckle up though. Things are going to get huge and wild and reckless and intense after this chapter. I'll be doing things I haven't done before in this story. It'll be a roller coaster ride as storyline after storyline tangle together and—**_boom_**.

(Have fun reading!)

* * *

| Chapter 8 | September 26, 2013 / Antwerp, Belgium |

* * *

_One of these days the sky's gonna break  
And everything will escape, and I'll know  
One of these days the mountains are gonna fall  
Into the sea, and they'll know_

* * *

Michael's perpetual first reaction to an overwhelming emotion is destroying himself from the inside out. His second reaction is to look for a sufficient distraction.

When Elizabeth and Hayley were killed in front of him, one single event single-handedly ripping his life to shreds, his first reaction had been to overdose on morphine. His head had been a very hopeless, morbid place. Nothing, he'd thought, _nothing _could ever make up for that. His life could never be worth living again, and without his two ladies he lacked every motivation to even try.

Percy had given him the distraction he had needed: training more extensive, more exhausting than what he had ever enjoyed during his military training. He curled up in bed with sore limbs and a pounding headache every night for weeks and when that finally faded, when he finally started outgrowing his mentors and stopped being the odd one out he noticed that the pain had dulled to more of an ache that took his breath away when he stood still for long enough, but at least it made day-to-day-life bearable.

Amanda concluded eventually that he had dealt with the loss of wife and child and so he had been promoted to the agent life as he'd come to know. It allowed him no chance to think about it much.

When the truth came out about Kasim and Percy he drove around for hours, fingers itching to tug at the steering wheel and crash into the side rails. He wished he'd been able to say it was as if the world was suddenly turned upside down but he knew better than that.

His world had never stopped shifting since the day he joined Percy, and he had been foolish to believe this stranger and his motivational speeches, he had been stupid to shut Nikita down time and time again as she told him Percy wasn't to be trusted—look at what he did for a living—but he had invested all his trust in the man and lost the gamble.

It was Nikita that granted the distraction this time around. The curve of her hips as he trailed his fingers over her skin, the texture of her tongue on the shell of his ear, her breath against his neck and he almost forgot that losing his life for the second time hurt almost as much as losing his life the first time.

But he had always had strong feelings for Nikita and being able to let all of it come out now, to smile with her and not sleep alone at night pulled him through.

Aiding his girlfriend to bring down Percy helped, too.

When Nikita left, he didn't think there'd be a third saving grace. For a moment maybe he thought he would find it in Alex, or Birkhoff, or Sonya, or Ryan. There had been four people willing to do whatever it took to get him through his flunk, but he was unable to accept their help.

And alcohol felt like a distraction. It honestly did. It took his mind off things, wrapped him in numb and silent. But it wasn't a distraction. It was destroying him from the inside out.

* * *

For him, the weeks blurred together in a mess of new places, new faces and the same old spy work. Birkhoff and Alex got a breakthrough managing to access the network and database of the United Nations, that much he knew, and after that things went fast and slow at the same time.

He remembers helping out as much as he could some of the days. His expertise when it came to organizing operations, having been Percy's second-hand-man for painfully long, came in handy. He also remembers locking himself in his room with a bottle of vodka afterwards every single time, washing away Percy's betrayal and Nikita's too-hot mouth.

The memories are haunting and beautiful.

Once he went to a bar... well, that was how most of his stories went those days. ("Once I went to a bar and," he would say, as if that _once _hadn't been yesterday, as if he wasn't stumbling drunkenly into the house with purple among the yellow on his bruised body.)

Once he went to a bar and against all odds a woman approached him. No one ever did. He looked the part of an old drunk. But she did, and she wasn't half bad. Big eyes surrounded by smokey circles, hair loosely draped around her shoulders—and he was single and horny, but he was also messed-up with a woman on his mind.

"You should've seen me a year ago," he'd slurred and she'd smiled and then he left.

The entire way home he thought "you should've seen me a year ago," because despite Amanda being out to get them, he had been hopeful.

With Ryan's analytical abilities, the new intel, Birkhoff's genius mind (when he wants to be helpful, he's helpful) and what they remembered from the map they'd gotten from the satellite they managed to narrow it down to three countries.

It needed to be insignificant enough to hide. It needed to have more escape ways than entrances. From global they went to Europe, and from Europe they went to three small countries.

They checked Portugal first, but if they had been there then they had been extremely thorough in ridding the country from their presence.

When they couldn't find anything there, they tried Luxemburg. Michael hadn't even known that was a country that existed. Running grids and searches over that country was a lot easier though, considering it was hardly worth mentioning. They could've put all of Division in it, given everyone a house, and the country would've been filled.

Nothing.

When they moved on to Belgium they didn't think they would find anything, either, hopes smoldering but then—oh Amanda. She was picked up on a street camera _buying chocolate_.

"So you're a woman after all," Michael had said, and no one had known if they should laugh or not so they didn't.

* * *

Michael thinks he would've loved Antwerp if he had come here a different man. Had he still been the man he was a year ago, visiting the beautiful cathedral and lounging on a crowded square eating true Belgian fries (they're delicious) would have been a highlight. He would have mapped the city into his heart and etched its buildings into his mind forever.

But instead he sits on a terrace and drinks his… how many-th beer?

Nikita has had three days to return to them, now. To either join him, Alex and Birkhoff in Antwerp or come home to Ryan and Sonya. But she hasn't. She's still gone, so far out of his reach, and he drowns his confusion in beer that pushes him off his balance and keeps rampant thoughts under its thumb.

If he stops drinking, they'll come badgering him again.

So he drinks and drinks until he doesn't get any anymore, and then he staggers home over a dimly lit shopping street and watches the trees and their coloring leaves—when did summer start fading into fall?

He doesn't really care.

* * *

Birkhoff led the operation. That only added to Michael's feeling of _wrong_. Because nothing was how it was supposed to be; he shouldn't have been so off-balance that he could no longer do what he had always done. But Birkhoff had taken control weeks ago and unlike everyone else, that power didn't get to his head—maybe because his ego had grown to its full stretch already being Shadow Walker. Michael would never know.

Birkhoff stayed clear, focused. He didn't take any bullshit.

Michael used to be that person.

As he and Alex approached the building they'd figured out was The Shop's current headquarters they listened to Birkhoff commandeering them all.

"Sonya, you keep your attention on the security cameras, and erase every image of the BUTR on it. We can't be discovered before we have _anything_. Don't screw this up too." For a moment, Michael was curious about something else than where Nikita was. _Too? _"Ryan, you get the UN on the line the moment we've recorded anything useful for them."

There was a short, affirmative response from a man that had been equally reluctant to hand over the stick of power. He'd been glad to not be in charge of Division anymore, but that didn't mean he hadn't felt it his rightful duty to keep this group alive.

"Alex and Michael; ask questions first, kill second. Nikita's life is at stake here."

* * *

Michael still scans the perimeters of their hotel, even while drunk, when he gets there because it might be over but it's not really. Until Nikita is back there will never be a feeling of finality to everything that has happened.

Maybe he's just _refusing_ to let it sink in, but if that's the case then there's nothing he can do about it.

For the last few years, he has been picturing the end. None of those included an absent Nikita. He wouldn't accept an end that had Nikita dead or gone in any way.

So now he's going to wait. He's going to wait for her to come back to him, even if that means waiting a lifetime.

* * *

[They didn't ask questions even though there were many. They found the president and several other political figures caged in the basement. Once Alex got those out, Michael killed everyone on sight in his raging fury that the love of his life had been driven away from him over a _lie_.

The next morning the United Nations stumbled across a gold mine of information on trafficking hubs of an organization they had never heard of.

For the first time, things were finally over.

Almost.]

* * *

_One of these days letters are gonna fall  
From the sky telling us all to go free  
But until that day I'll find a way to let everybody know  
That you're coming back, you're coming back for me_


	9. Chapter 9

**Tagging: **Nikita, Michael, Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sonya, Sam. More to come, but secret for the element of surprise.  
**Ships:** Undecided. I'm going to see where the story takes me and I will listen to readers' input so let me know what you want!  
**Rating:** T.

This one's for **chpll1525 **(because she's an angel cupcake) and everyone else that's stuck with me so far.

Warning that everything in this chapter is more or less **chronological**, unlike previous chapter, but there _are _time skips.

I think that's all the author's note I have for this time. Enjoy!

* * *

| Chapter 9 | June 15 — July 2, 2015 / Philo, CA |

* * *

_All this time spent in vain  
Wasted years, wasted gain  
All is lost, hope remains  
And this war's not over_

* * *

It hasn't been quiet in Sam's mind for a while.

* * *

He doesn't precisely know why he packs his bags and goes to Chelsea when he hears the request via the radio—"To our dear friend, Sam Matthews. We miss you." and okay, they wouldn't go through so much effort and put themselves in so much danger if it wasn't _necessary_, but Sam had made sure there was no way back.

He'd been convinced that the Division part of his life was closed forever.

Maybe it could never be.

But he does, and he ends up in Chelsea around midnight and sees Alex again after more than two years and it's nothing short of life-changing because if on the plane he was already thinking that maybe he could have possibly missed them a little bit, too, he's now sure of it and he doesn't know what that means.

He doesn't hug her because Sam doesn't hug people, doesn't initiate any sort of human contact really except for the cheap prostitutes every once in a while to quench the most human of needs, but if he did... he would hug Alex.

She looks more like a broken girl than she ever has. _Girl_. And she has been just as much victim of Division as he had, and they have that in common, they have _so much _in common—but it would have been weird.

...probably.

They walk mostly in silence until they catch another plane, and from then things go excruciatingly slow. He can endure one flight just fine, but three in one day is a bit much. In Washington they're joined by Michael, Birkhoff, Ryan and Nikita... and they're all so very different from what Sam thinks he remembers.

For some reason, they end up heading to California but he falls asleep mid-explanation.

* * *

_Pain roars its ugly head. His teeth break inside his mouth, blood seeping into his mouth._

_When he spits, pieces of tooth clatter over the floor._

_Ticking of heels. There are wails of agony in the background._

_He starts running, but behind him is a trail of red and white._

_A wall. His head splits open when he runs straight into it._

_All sounds come closer. The screams aren't far away—they come from inside his chest._

_Suddenly his cheeks stick with tears._

_Amanda pulls him up at the hair and flings him away. He flies._

_The feeling of freedom is shattered the moment he falls into a chair._

_He doesn't know if she's his dentist or his brain surgeon, but her wicked smile says enough._

_It won't be fun._

* * *

His shirt sticks to his chest when he sits up. He heaves, clawing at the sheets as he tries to breathe. The Californian heat squeezes him between invisible palms. Excruciating pain is all he feels for a little while.

He doesn't notice the gentle fingers that tread through his hair until he's completely calm, breathing weak but there at least. When his eyes flicker up, he sees the empty eyes of a woman he used to know.

His heart twists unpleasantly. Nikita, while Sam doesn't like where she stands for, always protected him. She never gave up on him, even when her friend Owen disappeared into a person she thought she knew but didn't.

"Hey," he breathes, and his voice is hoarse. Did he scream during the nightmare? That wouldn't even surprise him.

She hands him a glass of water and he notices the bruises on her wrists, as if she had been cuffed and she fought it with all her might—something typically Nikita, actually.

"Josephine," she says quickly, letting the sleeves of her shirt fall over her wrists despite the heat. "Nice to meet you, stud."

His head hurts all over again.

* * *

[June 20, 2015.]  
["_There are... **two**... entries._"]

["**_One_**_..._"]  
[11:32am.]

["It's hard to keep track of what I know when things are... different. Apparently Nikita suffers from Amanda-induced personality disorder too. I don't know if I like Josephine or not."]

(A pause of just a moment.)

["They brought me to a farm in California so I can work with her in peace and quiet. They want to fix her, after all she put everyone through...]

(He sighs here, but it is surprisingly warm. A sigh of "_oh_ these people", rather than "_damn_ these people". When did that happen?)

["I'm still trying to figure out everything that's happened in my absence, but... I guess I'll be here until I've helped them. After all, I do sort of owe them, don't I?"]

(Another sigh.)

["Yeah."]

["_End of recording._"]  
[11:37am.]

[Attached memo:

6600 Hwy 128, Philo, California. Sonya's family's farm.

Nikita = Josephine. (+ drug addiction, underweight from malnourishment)  
Michael = more of a dick than usual.  
Sonya = creepy quiet.  
Alex = drinks a lot?]

* * *

There is a moment, after he has been there for close to two weeks with people he thought he'd never willingly sit down with again, and they're having breakfast and he realizes things feel almost normal.

Except for the fact Josephine is locked in her room like a prisoner and Sonya doesn't speak unless spoken to and both Alex and Michael look like train wrecks in the noon, things _are _normal.

Birkhoff is still the sarcastic ass he was years ago, and Ryan juggles two of Sonya's baby cousins a lot nowadays, and Sam makes remarks of the cleaning-variety occasionally between bites of fresh fruit—because it's a farm with fruit orchards that fill the air with the sweetest scents and seem to reach infinitely—because ding dong Division is properly dead now.

He looks around the table and feels like he did in a previous lifetime. He can almost taste Nikita's veggie shakes again, or the scruffy bickering he used to have with Michael (that, mind you, not _always _ended in a near-brawl with tension that sparked). He thinks this family might be healing itself again, slowly but surely, and they're including him.

It feels better than he thought anything could ever feel.

* * *

He wanders around the orchards often at night, when the sun has finally gone down and temperatures cool down to an acceptable level.

(He's sure he has sweated off a few pounds already.)

There's just so much going on all at once and he needs the space to think it all over.

The family's dog trudges next to him, fell into step with him when they started and now they've been walking for a while. Sam ruffles the dog's head, fingers dragging through the long golden hairs, and sighs to himself.

_What have I gotten myself into?_

Nikita's situation is not a complicated one, like his is. He's still not sure who he really is—Amanda left him messages in the past two years, successfully messing him up again. Driven him away from the people he'd come to depend on, settling into a person he didn't feel familiar with anymore, became Sam Matthews again... and then she began all over again. Now he's not sure if that was a ploy of Amanda, if Owen Elliot was, if any of it was or wasn't.

Nikita's is pretty clear because Michael was actually around during her recruitment, got to see who Nikita was before she became a new version of herself, the assassin with the greatest talent for it. Birkhoff and Michael were around when Josephine was created and used the handful of times it was.

They know who Nikita is supposed to be and what makes this other person tick, too, so it's easy.

It should be, at least. It really sort of isn't.

* * *

Sam sits in Josephine's room quite often because Michael and Seymour might know this person inside out from their Division days, but he doesn't.

He has long conversations with her. He helps her through her withdrawal symptoms as much as he can because he went cold turkey once upon a time too. He listens to her nightmares when she sleeps, convinced he hears Nikita through the screams.

One night he's doing what she does to him so often, combing through her hair to ease her back to reality, and she kisses him so hard to thank him he's sure his head is going to spin for days.

When Michael glares daggers at him when he comes out of the room next, it feels like payback for all those times he got shit from the dude without even acting on his feelings.

* * *

That night he lies awake. He stares at the ceiling, curtains rustling with the wind, sheets kicked off the bed, and suddenly kissing Michael's... something, whatever Nikita is to him right now, doesn't feel as good anymore. Nothing feels as good anymore when he mulls it over.

Because all of them were broken by Division, and maybe that's why he came back: because he abandoned them when there was still hope they could be saved, and now it feels like there's none left.

He can't live with that guilt.

* * *

["**_Two_**_..._"]  
[18:02pm.]

[To Do List [update]:

[ ] decide.  
[ ] figure out the cure for A-IPD.  
[ ] maybe help the others, too.

* * *

"Sam?"

He looks up from his tablet, where he has been organizing his diary for the past hour or so. Memos, notes, recordings and full-on written texts all sit inside folders because he doesn't trust his memory, not anymore. He deleted outdated ones, updated the one that's been most frequently edited the weeks he's been here: his progress on finding a way to help Nikita.

In his door frame stands Alex. She's dressed in a summer dress that reaches half-way her thighs and her body has grown four shades tanner and a bit more fleshed out since they came here. Sam believes she's doing well. She _looks _well. Hell, she looks damn fine.

"Yeah?"

"Can I come in."

He nods and tries his best attempt at a smile. "Sure."

She steps in tentatively, that much he can see. She calculates her steps, doesn't sit down—she stand a little awkwardly leaning against the footboard of his bed. When she speaks, it's not as awkward anymore, but that's probably because it's not small talk.

(Sam hates small talk. Owen used to, too.)

"When Amanda messed with my memories, Nikita talked me out of the delusion. She gave me facts and made me realize what had happened... what had _really _happened. I tried to—It didn't work when I tried. But maybe if you... Michael and Birkhoff actually tell you things and maybe you—"

"Thank you, Alex," he sits up, tablet locked and shoved underneath his pillow, and scoots closer to the foot end. "That helps."

She nods, looking down at her fumbling hands. "I just want her back."

He reaches out to take her hand, and it's such an Owen thing to do but he doesn't really realize it. His mind is all about Alex, momentarily. "I know you do. She'll come back."

Her smile is weak and watery, eyes filling up, but it's there and when she turns her back to him and walk out, that's what he clings to.

* * *

"What is wrong with you?" It's clueless, and not subtle at all, and Sonya's eyes widen when he asks it but it's been so many days and he hasn't heard more than twenty words coming from the (reasonably attractive) woman that he thought would be Birkhoff's girlfriend five-ever.

"Don't," she says, and her voice sounds scary there. Panic sits in her eyes, but something else too, and it causes him to stand back up from the couch as if the seat was too hot.

It might just feel like that, anyway.

"Okay, forget I asked."

He leaves the room with head hanging and doesn't realize that from the other side of the hall, Birkhoff _swears _Owen is back.

* * *

Reality hits him very sudden one evening when they're going through the orchard, plucking apples from the trees and even _Sonya _is sort of having fun, smiling cautiously, and even Michael and Alex seem to be in an okay mood, and they brought _Josephine _out with them and she's dancing along the trees (Ryan never straying far from her, including the two toddlers and the dog that barks happily), and Sam realizes that he doesn't ever want to leave.

Sam never attached to places. Owen did.

* * *

[July 2, 2015.]  
["_There is... **one**... entry._"]

["**_One_**_..._"]  
[18:02pm.]

[To Do List [update]:

[**x**] decide. — Owen  
[ ] figure out the cure for A-IPD.  
[ ] maybe help the others, too.

* * *

"Hey Josephine, can I speak with you for a moment? Privately?" He extends his hand to her and she takes it, a confused look adorning her ghostly pale face, and he guides her out of the maze of fruit trees and into the house, back to her room.

They sit down on the bed and she sits close to him, he can smell the shampoo on her skin and the fruit that's wriggled in her hair.

"What is it, Sam?"

He smiles. "Owen."

When she frowns, he laughs for the first time in years.

"What?"

"It's Owen. I'm sorry. That's not what I wanted to talk to you about..."

* * *

It hasn't been quiet in Sa—_Owen_. It hasn't been quiet in Owen's mind for a while. But now, things are finally clearing up.

* * *

_There's a light, there's the sun  
Taking all the shattered ones  
To the place we belong  
And his love will conquer_


	10. Chapter 10

**Tagging: **Nikita, Michael, Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sonya, Owen. More to come, but secret for the element of surprise.  
**Ships:** Undecided.  
**Rating:** T.

This chapter is **long overdue **and everyone that's been wondering what happened to Sonya... well, here you go. The time's finally there for me to reveal this part of the story!

I'd also like to **apologize** for the delay. I've gotten really into watching the championships for League of Legends and today I met up with two of my friends that I've met online (flkgfdeksgkhcn!). It was awesome, as to be expected, and even though I'm burning up with sunburn and craving my bed, I decided to get this chapter out first because you deserved it.

Also please forgive anything that doesn't match with season four spoilers given at **SDCC**, Team Nikita's lair being a plane is genius (and a little reckless, one well-aimed missile and down she goes), and I did not consider that option.

That being said, I hope you enjoy the chapter!

* * *

| Chapter 10 | November 12, 2013 / Washington, DC |

* * *

_It's never enough, no, it's never enough  
No matter what I say  
It's never enough, no, it's never enough  
I'll never be what you want me to be_

* * *

Sonya sits cross-legged in a plastic chair in the airport and tries to decide if she's elated or dejected.

She's wrapped in her fuzziest sweater against the November cold, and it reminds her of when as a little kid her father used to put her in his hoodies to keep her warm—feeling good, +1.

But she's all by herself. Even in a crowded airport, with people all around her, she feels lonely. She watches family rush to gates, couples walk with entangled hands swinging between them, there's a little girl staring through the window with big eyes and moves her head so fast between planes she'll get a whiplash sometime soon. And she's all by herself—feeling bad, +1.

(Loneliness is a feeling she's well-adjusted to. In her Division days, in her Team Nikita days, in the days after she left she had big periods of feeling truly and utterly lonely. The feeling doesn't keep her in a chokehold as much as it used to anymore.

It's still a bloody stupid feeling though.)

Sonya keeps adding +1s to both sides of the spectrum of emotions until she loses track—that's pretty uncommon. She has a mathematical brain. It only goes to show that things are changing, for better or for worse.

Her arms wrap around her body when she slumps back, not much left of the woman that stood standing, strongly, through it all. (Only to give up now.)

The fuzzy sweater she initially wore to brave the temperature now helps her disappear from the world.

* * *

As a child, Sonya lived for Saturdays. Her days at school weren't bad or boring by any means, but Saturdays were magic.

They began with taking her older relatives to church. One of her mother's uncles, her grandmother, her father's sister; she held someone's hand on the dusty path through the fields and babbled away happily.

(She had been such a talkative kid. It was a family thing, mother's side.)

She hadn't been particularly into the idea of church and religion, more into nature and science, but it was peaceful and she always got to light the candle.

The afternoons were the best though. After church they would go back to her grandmother's house; actually more like the shed of her only maternal aunt's house, conveniently turned into a cozy next for a 50-year-old with the energy of a six-year-old.

They had lunch and tea and biscuits, but it wasn't that.

It was what came _after _that that made Saturdays the most amazing day of the week.

If the weather allowed it they sat out in the grass, if not near the fireplace, and grams started talking. About her life in Africa, about packing up her entire life and doing everything (_everything_!) to give her children a life in a better country (opportunity-wise), about civil wars in her area that tore apart families, and the great, great people of the continent she would always consider home.

(She had enjoyed listening probably even more than talking. It was a family thing, father's side.)

Sometimes her grams would talk for hours. Sometimes she taught Sonya how to tap into that big African spirit that sat, undoubted, somewhere nestled inside and they'd dance and sing and laugh. Sometimes they napped in the sun and woke up just in time for dinner.

Her family might have not had much wealthy but they had magic Saturdays and nothing could beat that.

* * *

Sonya started working every weekend when she'd turned sixteen and it's then she discovered another form of magic. Less raw and passionate, but pretty great in its own right nevertheless.

She worked at the front desk of a sub-office of a big corporation, hired despite her skin tone (racism was a thing she'd grown adjusted to) because of her impeccable Engllish and ability to look proper and clean without it looking awkward—she was what they had been looking for, basically.

It was a pretty uneventful job, all in all, but between receiving clients and answering e-mails and calls she had the chance to use her work computer.

Two months later she had decided to tuck away her plans of becoming a mathematician and instead dreamed of pursuing a possible career in the IT world.

She could've pulled it off too, the just way at least, if she hadn't had that streak of bad luck.

* * *

Sonya hesitates briefly. Just a moment of weakness, really, but it's there.

She stands in the middle of the spacious airport hall, the same one where she has come to pick up Alex numerous times, and around her everything is normal. Only _she _is so very not and she's well aware of that.

There's three options.

1) Don't leave. Blow off these running away shenanigans and go back to the house before Seymour finds her note. Give him another chance, tell him. Give Nikita another chance too, a few more days to come home and free the others from the chains that kept their lives on hold.

(It's horrible to be the only one capable of moving on.)

2) Go to California like planned. Join her family up in Philo. See her parents and siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles again. Start a healthy life.

(Or try, at least. She _has _to give it a shot.)

3) Africa. It's a wild idea. She hasn't thought this through. But she just misses her grams so much, on top of everything else it's not something she can deal with. And she never did get to say goodbye.

(It's like Sophie's choice.)

* * *

The news came as a blow to the throat.

_A venomously ironic_ blow to the throat.

The country grams fled to to ensure a better, safer life for her family turned into the country with the piss poor weather that caused her disease.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

It couldn't have come at a worse time, really. Just a few days before the corporation she had been working for to save up money for college and get a savings account going became victim of fraud scandals—and they turned out to be true. Suddenly thousands of people were out of a job, including nineteen-year-old Sonya Jackson who had already had to wait another year to go off to college.

The family did everything they could, gave grams as much from their savings as they could, and while it pained Sonya to have to say goodbye to her college dream she wasn't ready to say goodbye to her grandmother. The sacrifice was quickly made.

It was barely enough to cover the hospital stays.

No wonder she retorted, after weeks of sleeping poorly, to illegal tactics to get her grandmother the medicine she needed and the nurse care she really couldn't go without.

* * *

She had been so terribly close to being caught that she had been on the verge of packing up her family and taking them somewhere else, just like her grandmother had years ago on another continent, even though she was twenty-one and had no idea what she was doing.

Amanda had been a saving grace. Swooping in like she had, with not only a job offer but also the promise to take her family to sunnier regions and clean their names from any police reports or criminal records. It had seemed like something too good to be true for all but an hour.

Of course Sonya signed, even when she was told that the job she would be doing wasn't exactly 100% okay. Anything for her family.

And that showed one of the key differences between Percy and Amanda. The latter knew precisely how to spin things on a personal base, treat everyone differently and gain their loyalty through something they could never, _ever _doubt.

The only reason Sonya eventually abandoned that loyalty was because despite Amanda's best efforts, grams didn't survive, even in exotic California.

* * *

She should know it's the worst decision she could've made, even if for all the right reasons. No vaccinations, no visa; she uses one of the few devices Seymour had several proto types of and wriggles her way into the first flight to Zimbabwe.

But it's something she needs to do.

She drapes her arms over her belly as she shifts in her chair, still very much invisible to the world, but she doesn't feel as lonely anymore.

She _isn't _lonely, actually. Well, she's not _alone_.

And maybe she should've told Seymour first but after seeing him put Nikita before her time and time again, after _everyone _basically ignored her when she wasn't doing something magical to get a step ahead—from Michael she expected it, but not from the rest.

Well, telling her grandmother's wandering spirit about her pregnancy is the next best thing.

[The miscarriage caused by yellow fever will break her like nothing could ever break a person, not even something concocted by Division.]

* * *

_It's all so messed up and no one ever listens  
Everyone's deranged  
I'm just so fucked up and I'm never gonna change  
I wanna lay it all to waste_

* * *

**Are you guys ready for the last five chapters? They're going to be crazy!**


	11. Chapter 11

**Tagging: **Nikita, Michael, Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sonya, Owen. More to come, but secret for the element of surprise.  
**Ships:** Undecided.  
**Rating:** T.

Dear Poison Ivy (guest reviewer), while I appreciate people that take the time out of their days to read my story and leave a review, I wasn't particularly okay with yours.

First and foremost, I don't like the idea that you _assume I don't know what I'm doing_. This story isn't centered around Nikita's recovery. While I won't deny the importance of Nikita Mears as a character in this story, the fact that I've written nine chapters of ten out of a point of view that _isn't _Nikita should be an indication that she's not my main character. This story revolves around all of them, broken individuals that are broken just a little more because "things have to get worse before they can get better". With that in mind, I have been right on track with my story. And I would know, considering it's _my _story and I've spent _weeks _thinking all of this through, planning it and writing it. You don't get to tell me what to do, you don't get to say I'm losing focus. You don't.

Second, I'm not going to bend backwards for someone that blatantly tells me she's losing interest if Mikita isn't featured, because I am open to all feedback but I won't stand for a petulant whiny child that refuses to see all this story has to offer, "lonely angst and just a little provocation", unless she gets her favorite ship. I adore Mikita, it is my one true pairing, but at least in this story, **love is important, romance isn't**.

Third of, the irony of your review is that if you'd just been a little more patient, you would've seen everything come together, and you would've read Michael and Nikita interactions and you could've let your shipper heart run free.

To everyone else, I'm ever so grateful for your never-ending support and how you all actually take the time to look deeper than the ships that could or could not be happening, and I love you all to bits and pieces. This chapter is for all of you.

* * *

| Chapter 11 | July 3, 2015 / Philo, CA |

* * *

_Find out  
I was just a bad dream_

* * *

Josephine likes to think of herself as a pretty well-rounded person. She has seen parts of the world, speaks five different languages, has a good relationship with her mother even though she's in her late-twenties and has been independent for more than half of her years. She reads plenty of magazines and is open to anything thrown her way.

When this group of people decided to bring her home with them, she didn't see it as something possibly dangerous. She saw it as a challenge.

Only now she is starting to doubt her decision. And she never does. She follows her heart and why would she regret that?

She regrets things a little now. These people single-handedly decided she couldn't be taking her medication anymore, leaving her in a bit of a slump, the rush of adrenaline and joy no longer coursing through her. She's recovered quite a bit by now, but it still sucks.

She liked the high.

These people also cut her off from all social interaction that isn't limited to them. She needs to talk to her mother, just hear the soothing sound of her voice. She doesn't ask for much, but that she wants, at least once a week. Things get more uncomfortable each day.

And last, but definitely not least, she hasn't been laid in _weeks_. Michael used to fuck her senseless before he would even consider giving her the medication she so craved, but since they took her out of the hotel and brought her to DC, then California he hasn't even visited her without anyone else around.

She misses it.

She likes sex, and she's not ashamed to admit it, and having this sort of unspoken agreement that he would give her what she needed if she gave him what he needed worked just fine for her.

So what changed to break it?

It confuses her, and the first few days she spent trying to figure it out. Now she's moved on. Sort of. Trying to, at least.

And Sam... Owen? She doesn't know, doesn't really care either—he's hot, and yesterday he asked if he could try something with her today, so she's trying her best to make something out of the wardrobe given to her by the brunette chick and look hella sexy.

The shorts with the raffled edges look good on her legs, and the top she put on over it makes her look almost angelic. The smirk though, the one she always wears, trademark Josephine, is the one of a devil.

Sam/Owen can try anything he wants with her, she's ready.

* * *

When she opens the door, he isn't alone though. And she hasn't known Seymour Birkhoff for that long, but when he wheels in a computer she knowsthings won't go the way she wants.

He doesn't seem like he's kinky enough to handle a threesome.

Her shoulders sag when she spins on her feet, elegant courtesy of ballet classes when she was six, and walks back to the bed. She looks up to see Owen cross-legged at the foot of her bed.

"There's a few questions I'd like to ask you," Owen says. He's smiling that almost goofy smile he has given her a few times before. The one that told her there was probably a lot more somewhere beneath that, something raw and animal-like and hot to match the charming exterior.

If only Birkhoff weren't in the room...

"Go ahead," she replies, French accent rolling off her tongue. (She knows how to speak English without. It usually works like a magnet though.)

"Tell me about your life?"

She chuckles, biting lightly into her bottom lip as she leans forward. "Honey, you're going to have to wine and dine me before that."

From the corner of the room Birkhoff groaned. "You guys are worse than Michael and Nikita."

* * *

She knew where this was going the moment Birkhoff mentioned Nikita. She hears them talk. Hell, she doesn't forget how time and time again they call her that.

Owen's the only one that ever calls her Josephine, actually.

She never paid much attention until now, an hour after they came into her room, they are busy proving her life never existed. And it hurts.

In her life, she hasn't known much pain. Her father died when she was nine, but she was told Percival Rose had always loved his wife and daughter dearly. She can't remember her father but she does remember she used to love him, and she guesses she still does.

Other than that, nothing. A few relationships gone wrong and some scrapes and bruises from being really reckless when drunk.

This, right here, hurts more than anything she's felt because she's real. She has recollections of things that happened years ago, how can she be fake?

But she tells them something, and they prove it wrong. She gives them the details she somehow remembers even though she can't even bring back the memory attached to it, and they show logs of how she was never enrolled at the ballet school in Newark or the elementary school near the bakery where she swears, high and low, she had her first weekend job when she was fourteen.

She refuses to believe they're right, because if she's not real... then what?

* * *

From the shadows of her mind Josephine has been hearing a voice. Sometimes it's quiet, almost like a mother singing a lullaby to make her fall asleep, even though the words don't match. Sometimes, when she's high and so detached from everything, it's loud. Loud, but with static.

Right now it's loud and clear.

The tears sting in Josephine's eyes as she watches the man sitting in front of her. Michael. She thought she was so familiar with him, knew the details of his everything because of how often he'd hovered above him.

Apparently where her memory was concerned, she really couldn't be trusted.

The ring on his palm caught her eye minutes ago, when he first sat down and instead of speaking just showed her it, and even though she can't remember an engagement she thinks she feels the utter joy that coursed through this body.

And is that it? Is that everything crumbling around the notion that she has all been made up. A dream of a woman? No. A _ghost _of a girl.

"Look", Owen says, and his voice is the most gentle out of all of them, as if he actually cares about _her_, about Josephine and not just Nikita, but she can't. She can't think about that because it makes her heart hurt and it already is. It already is so much.

He turns Birkhoff's computer screen slightly and she watches a slideshow of pictures, the crappy quality of throw-away-phones' cameras and street camera footage and she sees herself walk with the same man sitting on front of her. And the person on the screen seems _so _happy.

The voice inside her head screams, begs, pleads. Broken cries to be released.

And maybe she should. If all of this is true, she hijacked a life. From all of these people that have been taking care of her she has stolen a person and tucked her away so they couldn't have her anymore.

If she's really not real, it shouldn't hurt to... Well. It shouldn't hurt to die.

* * *

She's like a girl tiptoeing along the edge of a deep cliff. On her right are the burning car wrecks she has been dancing through. The smoke and dirt sticks to her skin. On the left there is a big unknown.

There are people ready to push her down the darkness.

She doesn't remember when she started caring for these people. Maybe it's her body's natural reaction to them, even if Ryan is the security guard of her hotel that beat her up a few times and Alex was the cleaning lady that always asked the wrong questions; somehow, she cares for them, and as she stands in the bathroom she gets nauseas again thinking about what she's going to do.

All she has to do is die, she tells herself. It's not that hard. It'll make them happy.

She bends over the sink and empties her stomach—at least, she would if she'd had anything in it. But her throat is raw from throwing up and all she ends up doing is dry heaving, her chest constricting painfully around her heart.

Right now, Josephine is nothing more than a B minus version of herself. Not even that. She's the B minus version of someone else.

There's a moment of hesitation when she looks up, a second where she thinks "fuck it, I _am _real" but the memories, while still unclear, are coming back. She remembers Caroline and Gary and Jordan, she remembers Percy who wasn't her father and Amanda who wasn't her mother. Goose bumps rise on her arms like tomb stones. She remembers, vaguely, the mechanic heartbeat of Division.

When she turns to the door, Owen stands there and smiles sadly at her.

If she can't do it for the others, the least she can do is do it for him. So she closes her eyes and _dix_, _neuf_, _huit_...

Nikita is beautiful. She smiles at her with gratefulness radiating through the eyes she thought to be her own, and her voice is clearer than it has ever been. Before, anything she said was to get to her, but now she doesn't say anything bad. She doesn't pray or plead to be let in again.

"Thank you," she says, and it's honestly beautiful.

Josephine thinks she can handle those being the last words she'll ever hear. Or maybe—

"Goodbye."

* * *

_Neither  
Ever nor never  
Goodbye_


	12. Chapter 12

**Tagging: **Nikita, Michael, Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sonya, Owen. More to come, but secret for the element of surprise.  
**Ships:** Undecided.  
**Rating:** T.

This was a rather difficult chapter to write and I am definitely glad it's out of the way. It's more of a filler than anything else, though there's some questions answered, and everything is now set up for the last three chapters! (**Whoa**!)

Without further ado, because I'm utterly exhausted over writing an extremely uneventful chapter for some reason, the floor is all Amanda's...

* * *

| Chapter 12 | February 21, 2015 / Fairfax, VA |

* * *

_The world is too heavy, too big for my shoulders  
Come take this weight off me now  
Thousands of answers to one simple question  
Come take this weight off me now_

* * *

People often underestimate the power of a good story. They forget censorship and banning certain works have been a thing for so long for a very legitimate reason. There's nothing more dangerous than an open mind and a deceptive web of concepts and characters.

Amanda is not one of those people.

There's a book in her lap and she'll be the first to acknowledge its genius. Oscar Wilde had never been allowed in Division, she'd made sure of that herself.

Division is beyond her though, and the woman she is reading to is as harmless as a butterfly. (As beautiful, too.)

Nikita...

Well. Not really anymore.

"_Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realise his conception of the beautiful._"

Amanda slips a bookmark between pages 168 and 169 and looks up. For a moment countless words dance in front of her eyes. Then her vision clears and zooms in on a pouting Nikita curled up on the couch.

"Can we do chapter twelve too, mother?"

"Another time, darling. Our guests can arrive any moment now. Be a doll and go make tea."

She watches Nikita leave the room. Her heart lurches... her body's translation of the conflict between loving this woman more than anything, and knowing this will destroy her life—if it hasn't already.

There was a time when that thoughts like those didn't get to her. Now she need to focus on putting the book back where it belongs, tucked neatly between _Oedipus _and _Pride & Prejudice_ on the third shelve from the top.

Her fingers rest on the worn cover of _Oedipus _for a moment, digits soaking in the words that start to feel like her own. It has been her favorite work of literature for years.

* * *

Amanda didn't expect to find Nikita the way she had. After the stint with the president, she thought she wouldn't see Nikita alive ever again.

(There was relief there, when things got resolved, even though she refused to admit it. Her best creation couldn't just be wasted by cutting her life short, she figured. It was enough to keep the doubts down.)

After that, Nikita went looking for her. Amanda was always one step ahead, always darted out of her reach until one day she turned around and caught her in her arms instead.

Quite literally, actually. Though in all fairness she had to mention there had been a taser gun involved.

That is almost a week ago now. And it hasn't been easy to find a balance where she doesn't just straight up kill Nikita for years before when she left Division, and, more importantly, left _Amanda_, but also doesn't cave to that part of her that just wants to do murder-suicide and then everything will be done.

(No way is she leaving without Nikita.)

(Hah.)

Somehow she's pulling it off though and that's the thing, isn't it? That Amanda can do anything?

(Yeah.)

* * *

Amanda stirs the spoon through her tea ever so slowly. Her lips are pursed as she looks them over. They'll suffice for the goal she has in mind—they will after she's finished with Nikita, at least. But somehow, none of these feel as satisfying as back when she worked with Division recruits.

The loss of Division is probably hardest on Amanda. It was as much her life's work as it was Percy, even though she started practicing and refining her particular brand of psycho-analyzing and torture and has spent much more time on it.

Division was like her war zone, where no one really looked up strangely when someone was found dead in her lair.

Casualties were calculated in the amount of recruits they got per batch.

They were never anything but prepared for everything, and that's something Amanda has been since she was reborn in that fire that simultaneously set her free and chained her down forever.

"You first," she says between sips, flicking her fingers seemingly carelessly at the only other woman among her company. She doesn't look anything like Alex, even though her curly hair are a shade of brown pretty close to hers, and her eyes have a sheen of blue through the green. It'll do though, and with Amanda's skills...

Well, it could be a monkey and it would work.

"Come with me." She gets up, leaving her half-empty cup of tea on a side table, and leads the woman into the other room. Nikita is strapped to the chair, though looks peaceful. The very first time Nikita wrestled until the straps had left deep purple bruises on her wrists.

This is both less and more amusing.

"Josephine," she whispers sweetly, smiling as she assures the needle is touching the cells it needs to be touching. "This woman looks like this." She says it matter-of-factly and lifts a photo from the tray of tools, pointing at a smiling Alexandra Udinov—from a recent shoot or something. "Do you see it?"

There's a moment of silence and then Nikita smiles. "I see it."

"Good. Very good, sweetheart. She works as a cleaning lady at the hotel you're going to stay for a while. The one in London?"

The smile on Nikita's face widens. "Nice to meet you! I'm Josephine."

The woman glances briefly at Amanda, who nods. "Nice to meet you too, Josephine. I'm Alex."

* * *

Amanda hand each of them an envelope with money and further instructions, and then makes them leave. There's no reason to keep the peasants around for any longer.

Long enough to see that she could hurt them if they crossed here, showcasing exactly what years of research on her father's work has amounted to, and plant these people in Josephine's mind as the key roles in Nikita's life... And all of that in thirty minutes.

She should get an award for the things she does. Nobel Prize of Physics.

(She doubts they'll give her the one for Peace.)

When they're gone she retreats to the living room that is a more spacious copy of her office back in Division. There are some things she can't let go of, and the truth is simply that her interior designing in that stage of her life was impeccable.

Why change when it's perfect?

She takes a few minutes to think, hands folded together in her lap; she never bothered writing anything down, keeping files on a computer or in a secret drawer of her desk. Percy documented everything, to the very last detail of even the most insignificant missions—Amanda had always thought of that as extremely foolish, even when she held the man in high regards.

Her mind did all the work for her. When her father had kept her in his chair, he had been trying to create the perfect human being. What she was left with were damaged capabilities of emotions and a more accurate, elaborate brain capacity.

She wasn't one for complaining.

In her mind she had the carefully constructed story of Josephine. She was an even better creation than Nikita had been. She couldn't kill—well. Amanda actually didn't know. Under the right circumstances, maybe she could. But there had been no gun training in the few days she'd been putting together this flawless character.

There had been yoga, and meditating, and dancing. (Nikita's body had shown quite the promise for ballet and as such Amanda had given her those precise skills.) She had kept in fashion and languages and manners and flirting from in Division, just freshened it up a little.

It had felt like when she first taught Nikita, with the exception that Josephine doesn't keep any secrets, she doesn't fuss, she doesn't go and falls in love with someone else. She is loyal as a dog to the woman she believes her mother and that's exactly how Amanda wants it.

And this time around, she strangely enough doesn't feel the need to gloat to a man that stands above her in authority. Being the most powerful being around, even if that means she's alone, beats everything.

She hates that Percy's dead though. Partly because she wanted to be the one to kill him (Nikita took that from her _too_) and partly because having an object of affection, as wicked as affection is when it's from Amanda, is still something a woman needs and can use to fuel her work.

Percy...

How the mighty fall. Deep, too, apparently.

* * *

"Are you ready?" Amanda stands near the dresser in Josephine's bedroom. It's decorated with great eye for detail. She spent a great amount of time on it too. Posters are pinned to the walls and unfinished drawings litter the desk, pencils of all sizes showing of a girl that's been busy drawing...

Except it was all planted that way to look as if the room has been used for years rather than days.

She used to do the same in houses used in deep undercover missions. Nothing supports a cover story like a house that feels like it has had life in it for a while, that breathes the days of one or more people.

This room breathes of Amanda Collins' daughter, star dancer and honor graduate and a wordly person with big aspirations. The kind of daughter Amanda could have been herself had she been given the chance...

Josephine pulls her out of her thoughts. "I am, mother."

She ducks into Amanda's arms. That she hadn't seen coming, but she holds her nonetheless, a little awkwardly but strongly. Josephine smells like happiness supposedly smells, and feels comfortable tucked against her chest.

She has spent so much time hating this person, dreaming up ways to injure and maim this body, and now Amanda clings to it like it's the most precious thing to ever be.

(It is.)

And she has spent so much time in utter anger and _fear_, directed at herself, for allowing Nikita to live and now it shifts into gratitude.

The last time she stopped being too afraid to do anything she put her old life to ashes. She's terrified of where this might go, but in true Amanda style, it doesn't show.

"Let's go then. We've got a cab to catch."

* * *

The goodbye is bittersweet and when she presses a kiss to Josephine's cheek, it feels like she's saying goodbye to a life that could have been, a "what if" sort of thing because she's sticking around to watch Nikita's demise in a steady addiction and abusing people all around her that will taint the picture of the people she loves forever.

She is going to stick around and watch Nikita disappear underneath Josephine, but it won't be the same, and she can't get caught up in this feeling of belonging to this person and serving a higher purpose _with her_.

But it's goodbye and it stings just as much as it sends the purest sort of pleasure through her.

Because if there's anything she enjoys, it's torture. And this right here is torture at its finest, with a slow build but undoubtedly a satisfying explosion.

She can't wait to see her plan in full action.

[Underestimating the strength of Nikita's mind ultimately causes for her to never witness it at all.]

* * *

_Oh, I'm like a kid who just won't let it go  
Twisting and turning the colors in rows  
I'm so intent to find out what it is  
This is my rubik's cube  
I know I will figure it out_


	13. Chapter 13

**Tagging: **Nikita, Michael, Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sonya, Owen. More to come, but secret for the element of surprise.  
**Ships:** Undecided.  
**Rating:** T.

Last chapter concluded the flashbacks because we're now fully caught up and I need 2015 for the **last three chapters**. (How fast did that go, whoa.)

Anyways, I'd like to thank everyone for the continued support, I definitely couldn't have done this without you guys, and I hope you'll enjoy the last bits of this story.

Meanwhile I'm also **holding a poll** for what my next multi-chapter story should be (because I'm the most indecisive person ever, pretty much) and I'd like your input! You can find the options here: /show/n_1rlj1kk - you can let me know in PM or in your review, whichever works best for you. :)

That being said, let's continue to the chapter, shall we?

* * *

| Chapter 13 | July 4 — 5, 2015 / Philo, CA |

* * *

_Yesterday was another life  
Turning left didn't turn out right  
Stuck in hell when I was twenty-five  
You can't regret what you don't decide_

* * *

It hurts. It hurts _a lot_. He holds Nikita while she sleeps, fingers mindlessly trailing through her hair and down her arms, and it hurts to know he let Josephine go, just like that, without telling her that maybe, in a weird sense, she _mattered_.

Because if he can't believe that, is it even possible for him to choose to be Owen? Does that mean that Owen is a figment of his imagination just the same and that he's destined to be Sam Matthews, who engages in friendly fire over drugs?

He doesn't want to be that person. So he pushes himself to care more than is healthy for him, ripping open wounds—he doesn't go to sleep without thinking about Emily first, let her laugh ring through his mind because he used to enjoy the sound of it so much.

They're going to be in a world full of pain. When Nikita comes by, they're going to be in a world full of pain because God knows what this mind trip has done to her. He has seen her already—_Nikita_, he has. And the look that flickered through her eyes right before she decided that she needed sleep before anything and just curled away from all of them... That look had been one of utter heartbreak, and he wonders how conscious she was when Josephine was out and about.

He sighs and sinks deeper into the pillows. His hand stretches over the left side of her rib cage, over the fabric of her top, and he listens with his palm to her even heartbeat.

It might be broken, but at least it's beating the way it should be and that's the hope they've all been clinging to. An alive Nikita, in whichever state, is still better than a dead one.

He closes his eyes and rests his chin atop her shoulder. His body aches with a sudden exhaustion, as if he hasn't slept in years, but somehow he doesn't manage to drift off despite the soothing lullaby of a steady heartbeat and gentle puffs of breathe.

So he spends the night listening to her, and pretends to be asleep when the others pile into the room and make themselves comfortable on the edge of the bed, in the chairs and on the floor to which Ryan says something about it being like the first night—Owen wasn't there, he wouldn't know; he likes to think it's poetically beautiful though.

Somewhere in the early hours of morning he catches a bit of sleep, maybe an hour or so, before he's awoken by Nikita's stirring against his chest. His eyes open to one awake person, and that's Ryan.

This could possibly end badly and surely enough he feels Nikita stiffen when her eyes finally open. Owen adjusts his embrace around her, fingers digging into her hips. "It's fine, Nikita," he breathes in her ear. "Ryan wouldn't hurt you. You know that."

She looks a little dazed when she nods. It breaks his heart. He pushes himself away from the headboard and sits up straight, forcing Nikita to do the same, and releases a deep sigh. "Follow your gut, not what you think to know."

Apparently he's really good at saying the things she needs to hear because Nikita's frown melts to a smile and she launches into Ryan's arms, wrapping her arms around his neck. She has looked tiny for weeks now, frail almost, but now that true Nikita spirit seems to be firing up slowly, she's a thousand times the person any of them will ever be.

Welcome back, Nikita.

* * *

The atmosphere of the farm definitely improves after that. Owen notices it clear as crystal. Even Sonya, while she still isn't back to the old Sonya they know and love, brightened up significantly after being hugged by Nikita. It's as if their old friend being back wipes out the last two years.

But they happened.

Owen plucks at his bagel when he watches as Alex and Nikita babble away happily about the United Nations, as if they haven't all gone through torture. He mutes the television when they finally toast to being free of Division's reigns, as if that doesn't still haunt them.

He tries to be the happy with them—he _is _happy Nikita's back and things seem to finally fall into place; but he's more Sam than he thought to be, and his pessimism overwhelms Owen's former optimism.

He doesn't trust that Nikita can be fine after all of this, and he suspects she's hiding her agony behind this happy façade out of some sense of guilt. He'd feel guilty if he did half the things she'd done—leaving them, saddling them up with Josephine no matter how charming she had been to Owen, forcing them to live through Amanda's torture with her...

And he can't blame her, he knows. But he _can_ blame her for faking right now, because when she'll have become too tired to act everything they're building up from now will crumble like a house of cards.

But when she sidles into the couch next to him and hands him a few slices of cucumber, popping one in her own mouth, he finds himself unable not to be affected by her smile and the gentle lights in her eyes. So he munches on the vegetables she hands him, and they watch an episode of _Friends_ together, all of them, and forget for just a little while that this is only the calm before the storm—again.

* * *

It's a beautiful afternoon and they decide that they have no reason (whatsoever) not to enjoy it to the fullest. Now things finally seem to be over, they can try and gently ease themselves into a normal life that isn't just a cover.

Or is it? Because wouldn't living a normal life given their history be just as much as a cover as it would be in an undercover mission? They aren't normal. They'd be wearing masks.

Except Alex genuinely seems to flourish right in front of their eyes at the mere mention of a picnic out in the grass, as if breathing for the first time because spring colors in the white blanks left by winter...

Except it's summer and their life is a perpetual dessert.

Except Michael does seem to have his spirits lifted a little, smiling a small smile that's not there yet, but it's getting there, and that's something at least...

Except everyone's just waiting for him to explode to Nikita about leaving them and breaking off the engagement.

Except...

Everything is too conflicting to keep track, Owen decides, and let's Alex boss him into slicing open bagels and covering them with chunks of fruit. He can play along until this life becomes his.

* * *

He tries. He really does. But there's something unsettlingly _off _about Nikita. They're outside in the grass, and Birkhoff has claimed the one shadowy spot to put his laptop and play music on it. He's surprisingly willing to spend the day without much internet at all, instead laying between Sonya and Alex and catching some sun.

Michael and Ryan are at the far end talking about something, but they keep glancing over at Nikita.

Owen sits next to her and watches her intently, because he recognizes the way she fidgets and he doesn't like what that might mean.

When she starts shivering, with this _heat_, he decides it's been enough. This can't go on like this, with all of them choosing to ignore that things can't just start being okay and fine and happy just like that.

"Nikita, can you help me get us refills?" he asks, picking up the empty cups. She squeezes her eyes open, hand reaching up to shield herself from the sun, and eventually nods. She gets up slowly, still smiling, a smile that doesn't drop even when Owen has pulled her into the kitchen and closed the door behind them.

"You're craving."

That does the trick though. Her lips purse together and her eyes cast downwards.

It breaks his heart a little to see her like that. He hates to think "I told you so," even though he never spoke his doubts out loud. How he wishes it could be this easy, that they could just bury all that had happened and start over.

"You look miserable, Nikita..." he sighs, putting a hand on her shoulder. She backs away, face suddenly contorted almost viciously. "Nikita..."

"I'm _fine_, Owen. Don't worry about me. I've got this under control."

"Are you sure?"

She says "yes" but all he hears is "no".

* * *

What makes it worse is that it's not just them that night. It's Sonya's family, too. They've seen uncles and aunts of Sonya before, considering they live in the surrounding farms that are all built next to the orchards they share (apparently), but not like this. This is a gathering of to be acknowledged proportions, and it's like an audience just waiting for something bad to happen.

Nikita's been getting worse. Owen notices because he has taken it upon himself to be her guardian angel. Michael should, and he's definitely been trying to talk to her and act as if he hasn't been angry with her for years, and utterly heartbroken and all that jazz, and Alex doesn't stray far from her side either.

But Owen seems to be the only person that sees it, and that's probably because both Michael and Alex have sunk to the neck into their own addiction—damnit. It's not like he can ask Ryan or Birkhoff either, because they are both as subtle as a canon; and Sonya still has her own demons to battle with.

So it all falls to his shoulders and he's the world's worst guardian angel. He loses sight of her an hour into the barbecue party and spends ten minutes looking outside, near the tables littered with food and the cool box filled with all sorts of juices and lemonades, near the stable where the chickens are nestled on their sticks, and then he goes into the house.

She looks like a ghost when he finds her. Sweat covers her face, accentuating the blue under her eyes that always faded in the sun. Her legs buckle.

_Oh no_.

"I think I need help, Owen," she whispers, clinging to the doorframe to help her stand a bit straighter. "I think—"

"Nikita, it's okay."

But it's not. It's _so_ not okay. And it has never been to begin with. They were cursed the moment Percy took a liking to them.

She doubles over before he can get to her, and he sees the empty bottle sit on the floor behind her, and he runs but he doesn't make it in time.

His voice sounds unnaturally broken when he shouts for 911 and tries to shake Nikita back to consciousness.

* * *

_There's no going back  
When life's a loaded gun  
You pull the trigger, trigger  
There's no going back_


	14. Chapter 14

**Tagging: **Nikita, Michael, Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sonya, Owen.  
**Ships:** Undecided.  
**Rating:** T.

Way in the beginning of this story I told you guys I couldn't bring back dead people. That for the sake of this story being at least semi-realistic, there was genuinely no way I could resurrect them. But I've made characters out of unstable brain conditions and I've let a dead woman speak before without any of it damaging the authenticity of this story—I can bring back dead people, too.

So this is for **Wootar16**, who asked me more than ten chapters ago. This one's for you, love.

* * *

| Chapter 14 | July 6, 2015 / Los Angeles, CA |

* * *

_Show me what it's like  
To be the last one standing  
And teach me wrong from right  
And I'll show you what I can be_

* * *

The first thing she hears is a mechanical beeping that sounds oddly familiar. _Beep_. _Beep_. Her mind blanks after twenty of them, the need to breathe too overwhelming to think about anything else. Her lungs churn, plead her for air.

_Why does it feel as if my chest is on fire?_

Panic settles in with a rush, sweeps through her like a wave crashing into rocks. When she tries to cough though, she can't. Something pins her against hard surface and she can't move, can't do anything but breathe shallowly. Every intake of oxygen brings along an intake of pai—

Calm washes over her as quick as the fire came, a blanket that drapes over the flames.

She knows what it is. Only one thing can numb a person like this. But why is someone putting her on anesthesia?

Nikita sits up—_Beep_. _Beep_.—and doesn't find the hospital room she'd expected to find, white and clean and depressing. Instead she's in an office and the fear tears into her body with claws that feel ice cold.

This is Amanda's office.

Sure enough as soon as that knowledge sinks in she hears the rhythmic ticking of heels and suddenly she is twenty again, a steeled exterior and an eye roll that was near-automatic as she tried not to be overwhelmed by the grandiosity of all that is Amanda.

She isn't as impeccable as ever. In fact, Nikita discovers stray locks and smudged make-up that don't fit with Amanda, but _do _fit with the terrifying look in her eyes.

There's nothing quite as dangerous as an unsettled Amanda, she thinks. She backs into the chair and tries to become one with it—at least that way she'll make it out of this alive.

"_You_," Amanda breathes, and nothing about her shows of composure or elegance like it used to. "You!"

Nikita swallows as Amanda walks right at her, the determination of a predator, a steely glint casting off her eyes. She looks like a dagger in human form, slim but lethal.

"How did you do it?" She stops at the desk, planting her hands firmly on the surface, shoulder-width, and leans forward.

No, not a dagger. A rabid dog.

"How did I do what?" Nikita squeaks, then coughs, and repeats the sentence with an unwavering voice.

"Don't play dumb with me, Nikita. I know you're not."

"I don't—"

"How did you break it?"

Nikita racks her brain for what she could have broken—_Beep_. _Beep_.—but she doesn't come up with the answer. Her head hurts too much, like something's locked up inside of it and is boxing into the bone from the inside.

She can handle a headache. It bleaks in the presence of Amanda.

"I don't _know_," she bites in response, trying to square her shoulders and be a more menacing presence—she tries to be what Division raised her to be, she realizes, and why? To please Amanda out of fear? Because she's tired of trying to be something she's not anymore?

It can't be the latter. She never wanted to be the Nikita Division made her to be. But, what she does know, is that it's set in her bones, it lives in her muscle memory. If something punches her in the face, her first reaction is not to duck and avoid.

It's to fight back.

It's what Division, it's what Amanda and Percy taught her to do.

And somehow, right now, it's lacking and she needs to find it before Amanda eats her alive.

Her eyes widen slightly when she realizes what the mechanical beeping is. It's the heartbeat of Division, the one that irks her so much, always put her on edge. And it seems to come from Amanda's chest, slow but calculated despite the frenzied state she seems in.

"I don't know," Nikita repeats, getting up out of the chair for the sole sake of walking around—_away_, further away from the taunting heartbeat.

"You can't just _not _know!" Amanda's eyes narrow and her fingers curl tightly together, a grip that undoubtedly would hurt if it were latched onto her body—Nikita forces her eyes to move somewhere else. "You did something! Tell me!"

When Amanda steps closer, Nikita steps back. Another step. A complicated tango of sorts, because while there's distance between them, Nikita feels Amanda like hot breathe against her skin, like fingers against aching bone.

A gun shot rings through the air. Nikita's eyes are frantic as they scan the room for the source, but she doesn't find the shooter or the gun, doesn't even see the bullet until it hits Amanda in the chest and blood pours from the wounds.

More follow until four bullets sit in Amanda's chest. Nikita falls to the floor on her knees and tear drops fall on Amanda's forehead as she hovers over the woman, cradling the body in her arms.

She chokes on her breath when she remembers this in a house in Virginia, a mind dazed with medication and a tongue dry like cotton wads. "Why?"

Amanda's slow breathing is interrupted by coughs of blood and hitching air in her throat and as she fights to carry on, blood red lips smile.

"I made you all of the things you never wanted to be," she mutters, a gurgling noise announcing another cough and blood lands on Nikita, splatters over her cheek and in her neck. "A murderer, an addict, and Josephine."

Nikita doesn't stick around to watch the lights fade out of Amanda's eyes. She runs.

* * *

Division is nothing like the last time she saw it. The hallways stretch longer, close around her more narrowly. Every corner she rounds doesn't bring her an elevator, just another long hallway with doors to recruit bedrooms on each side.

None of the knobs she twists give way.

The heartbeat of the compound falls into step with her, shakes the ground underneath her like thunder claps, and it raises goose bumps on her arms and bile in her throat.

This, all of this, has always felt more than just a place. If it was a solid human being, it would be simultaneously tall and small, broad and slim, sharp and smooth, hard and frail. If it was a solid human being, it is chasing her right now.

She feels its presence around her, coming closer with every step. Her legs are aching with exhaustion and she fights against her own boundaries because she can't let him, her—it, she can't let it catch her.

And maybe she needs to fight it. Maybe that's what she should have done from the very beginning. Found Division, actual Division, the humanly manifestation of it, and fought it.

When she turns around, she stands eye-to-eye with Percy.

He _is _impeccable as ever, as opposed to Amanda, hands in the pockets of his suit pants. The tie resting on his chest sways with wind that isn't even there—or maybe she just can't feel it, her cheeks pulsing with heat, her throat raw from the sobs caused by the haunting image of a dying Amanda in her mind, the sobs she stifled by biting on her tongue until she tasted blood.

He doesn't look like he has been running after her. He smiles though, and his eyebrow pulls up achingly familiar.

"Oh Nikki," he sighs, the fake paternal tone ringing through her head louder than it should. When he speaks, it's all she can think of. How unnaturally loud he sounds, as if he's in her head.

...he's in her head!

She falls against the wall, leans her weight heavily because she feels like she can't _stop _falling, and he doesn't stand in front of her anymore. He is in her head, talking, _laughing_.

"No one will miss you when you're gone," and "Don't even bother," and "You are now where you belong, and this time you won't leave," and everything sounds so loud and hurts, like stab wounds, like broken bones, like leaving the people you love most in the world and feeling the loss of something you thought you never had—something you weren't supposed to have.

She is shaking and she's on the floor, her chest constricting with agony, like Percy's arms cross over her torso and squeeze.

"You're right where you belong. You're home."

Her strangled cry sounds like a "no" but blood trickles from her temples down to her neck and with a snap, all lights dim and her ears prickle with deafening silence.

* * *

Her cheeks are wet with tears when he finds her. He smells like something exotic when he pushes against her, and when her head rolls against his decorated chest she can't help but smile. She doesn't need to open her eyes to know who this is, not that she could. Everything feels so heavy. Gravity pulls at her unrelentingly, as if not even the earth wants her to leave this place.

"Hey there, Soldier," she breaths, shaking in his arms.

His voice sounds like a far-away memory. "Nikita."

His steps resonate through their bodies, as if they're connected, and she waits until he doesn't sound like he's walking on concrete before she finally peels open her eyes.

The whiteness of the room slices through her brain like the worst migraine she has ever felt.

"You can't leave them alone now," Sean mutters sternly, and points.

Her heart beats faster when she follows his finger and finds herself in a hospital bed, tubes and wires coming in and out of her face, _beep beep_s coming from the machines surrounding the bed.

Everyone sits around her.

Nikita tries to touch them; tries to put a hand on Birkhoff's shoulder or tilt Michael's head up but she pushes through them like a ghost.

Her eyes find Sean's and her bottom lip trembles. "I'm dead?"

"You don't have to be."

He sits down next to Alex on the floor, his hand next to where hers is, their pinkies almost touching. He keeps on smiling though, despite the sadness in his eyes, and she's grateful for that. She would break down if it weren't for that smile.

"_Look at them_." The hairs on her neck stand up with an unpleasant tingling when Percy's voice rumbles through her ears again. "_Look at how much pain you put them through. That's all you do, Nikita_," her name on his tongue sends her lurching forward, staggering, unbalanced. "_They're better off without you_."

"You need to go back and take care of them," Sean speaks up from where he's sitting, but his gaze is not on Alex anymore. It's piercing right through Nikita. "For me. Because I can't. I _would_, but I can't."

Nikita cries. She cries unabashedly, kneels and then wraps her arms around her chest to try and rub warmth back into her skin, and she _cries_.

His arms wrap around her too and he's warm but feels like bubble wrap. "Tell Alex I love her." The certainty in Sean's voice that Nikita will get back, that she'll live, is overwhelming.

When Nikita opens her eyes and sniffles, Sean disappears with a thousand pops of plastic bubbles.

* * *

After Sean leaves it's quiet for a while. Nikita waits until her sobs subside, vowing mentally that this is the last time she's going to cry. All her life, she has tried to be stronger than she actually is. It's time she gets over the hurdle, the thin line between pretending and reality.

Because she _can _be strong, if she decides to.

Percy is battling her, somehow, someway—he's battling her and she would almost let him win, let him pin her down against the floor and fold her into fetal position.

But then she's up on her feet, stumbling through the pull of gravity, moving in large strides. She trips.

Two pairs of arms are there to catch her. Her vow not to cry almost crumbles right there. Carla and Caroline look every bit of the guardian angels they've always been, gentle glows lighting up their eyes.

"Go, Nikita. Don't let her win."

Their presence drives away Percy, or at the very least mutes him, and it's all she needs. Nikita nods, and despite the shaking she walks back to the bed. She reaches out a hand tentatively, and the world spins when she touches her own cheek.

* * *

The world is heavy when she opens her eyes, lids fluttering closed almost immediately. Life rushes around her but the heaviness is too smothering, and she feels herself slipping away again.

Percy's laughter runs through her like it's liquid.

The mechanical heartbeat stretches into one long sound.

_Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep_.

* * *

_And say it for me  
Say it to me  
And I'll leave this life behind me  
Say it if it's worth saving me_


	15. Chapter 15

**Tagging: **Nikita, Michael, Alex, Birkhoff, Ryan, Sonya, Owen.  
**Ships:** Undecided.  
**Rating:** T.

I was going to write a lengthy author's note. I've had parts of it in my mind for _days_. And now I've written this chapter, and it's long, and I have so many feelings right now over it being finished and like, I just eoqhsrdkubdjndeu?!

Thank you. That's all I really want to say. Thank you for reading this story as religiously as you have, thank you for sticking with me and being so kind and supportive. Thank YOU, whoever's reading this. You're wonderful and I love you.

**Thank you**.

* * *

| Chapter 15 | December 25, 2015 / Boston, MA |

* * *

_So let it hurt, let it bleed  
Let it take you right down to your knees  
Let it burn to the worst degree  
May not be what you want, but it's what you need_

* * *

The snow and the icy wind take all the feeling out of her nose and cheeks, and despite how tightly her hands are balled in the pockets of her coat, there's a smile on her face. Because Alexandra Udinov just finished her last exam of the semester, and she feels pretty good about it.

She huddles deeper in the scarf wrapped three times around her neck and peers through the flurry of snowflakes. There, finally, looms up the house she's been calling her own for almost half a year now...

Half a year and it still hurts.

Her teeth start chattering when she's about a minute away from the front door and she brings her hands up to blow warm air into them. _Should've taken Sonya's gloves_, she thinks bitterly as her digits start prickling with a venomous tingle.

Birkhoff told her a few days ago that she should be used to this, that she's _Russian_, and Michael beat her to hitting him in the back of the head. Not only politically incorrect, also no longer accurate. She hasn't been in Russia in a while, and wouldn't be able to bring back a memory of Russian winter even if she tried.

The house wraps her in pleasant warmth when she steps into the hall and drags blobs of melted snow and mud with her over the hardwood floors. The living room smells like cinnamon, chocolate and apple when she finally crashes on the couch.

"_Alexandra_," her mother chastises, tapping against her knee. "Don't wear your shoes inside."

With a groan she sits upright, and despite her fingers being partly numb, partly aching like motherfuckers she unties her laces and chucks her boots into the hallway closet.

It's been half a year, almost, and things have changed a lot. Still, it hurts. They had thought they would have been able to anticipate it. Had thought that when they came to that bridge, they could have crossed it. Had thought they could handle it. Had thought it wouldn't hurt like this.

Big mistake.

Because this is impossible.

They crumble at night when the heaviness of their loss presses down on their chest, and try as they might, sleep only ever comes early in the mornings.

They fall back on habits and routines and schedules, find solace in doing mundane things together, and frequent the attic-turned-gym.

Rehab forced them all to open up and trust the others with their own pain, but there are still mornings they wake up and need to fight to get up.

But it has gotten easier. Time, apparently, _does _heal all wounds—if you give it the space to, if you're patient enough to wait. Because it might heal, but it takes its sweet time.

Aside from talking about it, continuously ripping open the wounds again by sharing with the others, they've found that distracting themselves helps a great deal.

They've been giving this whole normal life a go and honestly? They are starting to fall in love with it.

Alex definitely is. The decision to give school an actual go came sudden, but refused to budge once the seed was planted, and Miriam Hassan cashed in on a few favors and got her a place at Boston University in its Political Science major.

It has been difficult but she's a hard worker, and she wants this. She wants to do more than just speak her mind at conferences; she wants to support it, and defend it, and know if it even makes sense or if it's not worth it to be mentioned.

She knows that with a better understanding of politics and history she'll do a better job, she'll be able to help more people.

And on a more self-centered side, she really just wants to live the college experience. She has never had a normal life, never got to enjoy doing the average thing everyone does—she feels like now, she just might.

* * *

Owen sits in front of the oven, foot tapping against the cupboard next to it. The wire of his headphones loops over his chest in curls and twists until it disappears into the pouch of his hoodie. He takes his sight away from the crust he's supposed to be keeping an eye on, only to swipe his thumb over the screen of his iPod and switch to the next song on the playlist.

He likes Christmas. He _decided_ he does, because it's a happy holiday, which makes it a good decision. Christmas music, while he never liked it before, now puts him in a great mood.

Mariah Carey though... nope. He skips the song as soon as it comes on and smiles contently when _Let It Snow_ starts playing instead.

Reinventing himself goes pretty well for him so far. He tries to be nice at all times and to not let things get to him. Every now and again, when the emptiness becomes frustrating, he gets angry and slams his fists into the punching bag until his knuckles hurt—but it's okay to need to vent, he keeps telling himself.

It is. Even the nicest people get angry sometimes.

If anything keeps him motivated, it's not thinking that outbursts of anger are allowed to happen, it's not being able to forgive himself for them.

It's daring to face his tattoos again every day.

In the time he spent as Sam he kept those covered up as good as he could, because seeing the butterfly made his gut twist with guilt. Now he feels good looking at them. They empower him, just like they did in the beginning.

It pushes him to keep up his work as a volunteer in the hospital two blocks down, to do random acts of kindness.

Like baking apple pie for his family, and the extension of those people. Alex' mother, Ryan's mother, half of Sonya's family.

And he'll undoubtedly find flour in his hair for days to come but he did it. He succeeded in following the recipe and now it looks like he'll pull it off, too. And for what? Simply to put a smile on their faces. Wherever Emily is, Owen hopes she's proud of him.

He looks up. The crust is getting more golden with every minute that passes and on the LED screen of the oven time ticks down more and more, too, showing there's only a few minutes left.

Michael walks into the kitchen, snow melting on his shoulders, which tells Owen the rest has finally arrived back from their trip to the supermarket. They appointed Michael the chocolate milk man, apparently. He busies himself with finding a skillet to pour the milk in, and Owen grins at him from his position on the floor.

There was a time when they didn't get along, but considering the situation, they found themselves able to get past it. Now, they'd almost be friends.

"I like my chocolate milk extra creamy," Owen remarks, tugging at a loose string from the carpet, "_momma Michael_."

"That's rich coming from the person that's been freaking out over apple pie all day," Michael quips back.

They laugh easily, and it's definitely the nicest change lately. How easy it's been getting to smile and laugh and be content, despite...

Well.

Owen tears the headphones from his face and pulls them around his neck instead, so at least he can sort of _feel _the music against his jaws and throat. When he gets to stand up, the oven beeps and for a moment he freezes. Mechanical noises still don't sit very well with them, but most of the time they manage to drown the sound out.

Michael doesn't seem to have heard it over the spluttering of boiling milk.

Owen sighs before pulling the oven open. The hot air wafts in his face first, the smell of apple pie second. He uses a dishrag to get the pan out, but the heat reaches his palms through the fabric anyways.

He blows against his reddened skin when the pan sits on the counter to cool off.

"Something smells good in here," sounds from the door frame and both men turn to look at Nikita, who takes that as her cue to step in further.

She looks better now than she ever has, in Owen's modest opinion. In the last few months she has filled out more, courtesy of rehab and her friends making her eat more, her cheeks are still flushed crimson from the cold outside and her mouth closes around an easy smile.

"You better be talking about my pie," he says and narrows his eyes at her just slightly.

Michael huffs. "She's talking about the cocoa, dude."

Nikita shrugs, rubbing her fingers together. "I might be talking about both. Guess you'll never know."

And just like that she darts out. Owen finds Michael's gaze for a moment and then they both smile, no territorial glares and puffed-out chests in anger, just happiness that she's alright, and she has been for almost half a year now.

* * *

Waking up from her coma and flat lining right after was terrifying, not just for the people around her. Nikita still has nightmares about it every now and again. She has nightmares often, actually. About Michael hovering over her, evil eyes and wicked smile as his fingers skim over her body and leave burns. (She knows it wasn't him, in the mental hospital, but Amanda made the person look like him for a reason. To let it haunt her. It does.) About Percy dragging her to her death even when he isn't around anymore.

She never wakes up alone after those. Either Alex or Owen, and a few times Birkhoff, slip into her bed when they hear her scream and hold her until she's awake and has calmed down.

She loves these people. She loves them all to bits and pieces. She hasn't made it easy on any of them, never has, but they never left. _She_ did, _she _left—and they accepted her back just like that.

But as bad as all of that was, it got worse after it. When you get shot, adrenaline often dulls the pain so you can still carry out what you set out to do, and only when you're done the pain strikes.

That's what happened.

When adrenaline had finally run its course, the pain that had been in the back of all their minds suddenly took over, crippling at its peaks and still white-hot at its lows.

They had thought they could get a hold on it eventually.

At least on that part they'd been right.

Their distractions and their therapy sessions in circles on the floor of the living room, telling about the things they regret the most and the horrors they can't let go of, give them the power they need to bite through the agony that is Division leaving an empty hole in their existence.

As much as they hated it, they were all shaped around it and by it, and it being destroyed inevitably destroyed them a little as well.

Nikita's distraction of choice is working at an animal shelter twenty minutes by bus away. She likes sitting in the bus, head to the window, letting the movements lull her to peacefulness before she gets to work with animals that have been abandoned, abused or just couldn't be taken care of anymore.

She likes most of the aspects of her job; feeding them, bathing them, taking them to the vet. Even when one of her babies needs to be put down, it's something she does with a smile because she firmly believes now that there's something better after this life.

More than once, though, she has taken one of the animals home.

A golden retriever with a limp paw they renamed Sean.

A rat with grey streaks in its dark brown fur that runs on his (squeaking!) wheel at the most inconvenient times; they wanted to name it Percy at first, then decided that wouldn't be fair to the rodent, and ended up with Madeline.

One of the cats at the shelter got kittens and Nikita took the one that couldn't keep from clawing at her legs. For some reason, she's sure it's Amanda's reincarnation. Something about the eyes. And Nikita, she can't help but forgive her, somehow, and names the kitten Helen.

(Every now and again someone walks in on Nikita bandaging another set of scratches, but at the same time, Helen can't sleep unless she's curled against Nikita's body, head nestled against the warmest skin.)

Two turtles, Elizabeth and Hayley.

It helps them deal with their losses, but it is starting to become a problem. They don't have much room for pets left.

Nikita climbs into the couch next to Alex and rests her head against the younger woman's shoulder. Helen purs as she settles between them. "How did your exam go?"

"Good! I think..." Alex _still_ sounds unsure, Nikita realizes. And it hurts, just a little bit, to know how little self-esteem this wonderful person has.

"I bet you have all As. And if not, you should totally blame Birkhoff."

From the arm chair in the corner, Birkhoff shouts about how offended he is.

* * *

Ryan and Sonya walk in last, but together, and drop their bags in a hurry to get to the table. They're always home last, being the only two with legitimate jobs—keeping down the fort at Alex' old office.

Alex might be gone from the United Nations for three years, that doesn't mean her position has to remain unfilled. So Ryan and Sonya decided to do it together, for time being, with Ryan taking care of the political side, doing the talking and thinking, and Sonya doing the administrative side, keeping track of all the paperwork and the agenda.

They're a pretty good team, in all honesty, and Alex already told them she's keeping them as her posse once she's back, loaded with a degree and much more knowledge in her noggin.

They slide onto their stools and Owen hands them a plate of apple pie with a smirk.

"I almost gave away your slices."

"You _wouldn't_," Ryan gasps, pointing his fork accusingly. The other man ducks away, back into his seat, and no one would have been able to think the child that had surfaced had made people disappear in acid once upon a time.

For a moment, the table's quiet. It's just the seven of them, without the family that's bustling around the house in preparation of the holidays (because they've all sort of not bothered to do that yet), like it's been the past half year and for a moment, everything is okay.

It's not nowhere near perfect. They're all still on the mend, trying hard but falling short for now. But okay, which is good enough.

Then a child bursts through the door and demands to be lifted into Sonya's lap. "Hey there, munchkin," she coos, handing her the fork and her pie (not a smart move, but she's always been selfless), and rests her chin on top of her cousin's head.

After a few bites her cousin, Maya, finally looks up. "Mum asks when you guys are going to decorate the tree."

Birkhoff groans and drops his head to the table. His nose seems to bump unpleasantly into the marble, but if he's hurting, he's too stubborn to let it show. "_Whyyyy_? So much work."

Nikita drums her fingers on the table before she gets up, hair sweeping over one shoulder. "Come on, guys. It'll be done fast if we all work together."

Sonya smiles and hugs Maya tightly. Together actually means _together _nowadays, all of them, equal and appreciated.

She guesses things had to get worse before they could get better.

* * *

So... they _finally_ drag the spruce inside. It stood against the front of their house (a red brick mid-nineteenth century bowfronts, aka, the same house as every single one of their neighbors in the South End of Boston; but a beautiful house nonetheless) for days.

Michael watches from a distance as Alex dances around the tree and hangs brightly colored garlands in the branches; as Sonya and Nikita pass each other baubles and try to gauge where they fit best; as Birkhoff hovers around them all and gives pointed remarks.

He doesn't notice Ryan until he feels a hand on his shoulder and stiffens momentarily, then relaxes.

"Waiting for the most important part?" Ryan asks, head tilted slightly. Michael shakes his head immediately.

"No, no. I—"

Ryan interrupts him by handing him the golden star that belongs to the top of the tree, catching light and reflecting it off its polished surface. It feels surprisingly heavy in his palm, and he doesn't know if it's because of the meaning behind the ornament or because it's _actually _heavy.

"We all want you to do it."

Michael looks up from the golden ornament to see the four people around the tree still, watching him with gentle eyes. Even Nikita smiles at him, like she _used _to that is, like he is an important part of her life rather than he _was _one, a fiancé she left behind or a former mentor she shouldn't have gotten close to.

"Fine," he finally concedes. He hasn't done this since Elizabeth and Hayley were still alive. The last time he did it he lifted his daughter up to reach the top. They'd used an angel though, one with a dress of white and blue, and golden hair made out of wool.

With a smile he leans back on the balls of his heels, looking at their work. It looks like children decorated it, a seemingly random composition of colors and objects, with a star that shines in the dim lighting of the living room; but it's beautiful.

It's not intentionally that he reaches for Nikita, he just clamps his hand around the nearest shoulder he finds and pulls the person belonging to it towards him. His arm slings easily around her shoulder. Her hand squeezes his left hip reassuringly.

Somehow they end up standing there for quite a while, the seven of them, and Sonya rests her head against his chest and it feels like _home_.

He didn't expect that Boston would become his home. If they were anywhere else, that could've been home too, but something about their neighborhood and their city is intoxicating. It must be because the people are nice, they're genuine and passionate. They live in a street with African Americans, artists and LGBTQ* community members, and every day is an interesting one.

They were welcomed without judgment (though they would've been daggered if they'd been anything but fans of the Red Sox).

The world around them is _alive_, and it pumps vigor back into them. For that, Michael is grateful.

The moment doesn't last long when Maya ducks into the room, and soon Sonya's other relatives follow, together with Katya and Ryan's mother, and the silence shatters into happy chatter and the sounds of rummaging in the kitchen.

If Ryan's mother is cooking tonight, Michael knows he's going to have to dig up his sweatpants.

He never allowed himself overindulgence before, but he's not a soldier or Division asset anymore. He works for a military trauma center, sure, but there's no more fighting for him. His abdomen is already softening from the rock hard abs that have been a part of his body for as long as he can remember.

He doesn't really care.

* * *

Birkhoff shrugs on his jacket and clacks his tongue to get Sean to follow, and quietly he goes outside. The house feels happy, but sometimes a person can get enough from even the best emotions.

He wonders if that's because he's not used to them, or because too much is too much. Whichever it is, a few minutes out in the cold will probably help.

Their yard isn't much, but it's enough to stretch his legs so he walks around, Sean trudging next to him, leaving tinier foot prints in the snow.

He's the only one among them that voluntarily chose to stay home rather than to pursue a job. Social interaction is still not his cup of tea, and he needs more time to get settled before he can think of venturing out.

That doesn't mean they don't go out. They've been to two Red Sox games so far, and they've befriended most of their neighbors. The gay couple three houses down had a barbecue the end of September and they came home with stomach ache from laughing and with Ryan dripping from being dunked into the pool.

So there's been social interaction and new people, but Birkhoff tries to limit it for time being. He'd rather focus on healing properly, on making sure no one of his family tries to run again, and he'll take on the role of pater familias for the sake of his family.

Sean presses his wet nose into his palm and Birkhoff scrunches up his nose. "Damnit, mut." His breath forms little clouds in front of them, and they come fast when he mutters curses, but he ruffles over the head of the dog anyway.

The door creaks behind him, a long line of light falling over the trampled snow, and then Nikita's walking up to him. She didn't put anything over her sweater so she's shivering.

"Idiot," he sighs, pulling her into a hug. She fits nicely against his chest. He holds her as tight as he possibly can without breaking her. "It's winter and you're too good for a coat?"

"Only wanted to come outside for a minute," she grins, shoving her elbow into his stomach. He heaves a deep breath, jaw clenching.

He releases his breath in a tall column of smoke that rises from his mouth. "Are you ever going to stop fighting me when I'm _right_?"

Her smiles tells everything, but she speaks nonetheless, popping her 'p'. "Nope."

Birkhoff rolls his eyes, starting towards the house again. Sean runs in front of them and ducks through the pet door. Nikita cuddles into his side, trying to get warmer.

Before they reach the door she puts them to a halt though, and steps away from him with a solemn look in her eyes. "Are you sure you don't want to invite your sibling for Christmas?"

He shakes his head slowly. He doesn't want to... not _really_. Maybe sort of. But right now, he doesn't feel like he can handle it. From all of them, he's the slowest healer, too.

"Okay then. You tell me when you change your mind, Nerd."

She walks back into the house, leaving wet footsteps on the tiles. He turns around to look at the night sky and sees the snowflakes increase its pace. They don't melt when they land on him, instead stick to him like a cover.

"Will do, Nikki," he says, smiles, and finally joins his (true) family again.

* * *

If anyone were to look in from the outside, they would see a family. They would see seven individuals that move around one another seamlessly, that share lingering touches and bright smiles. They wouldn't see the cracks, deep and unyielding; they would see all the beautiful things that are there to cover it up.

They would see friendship and love, in its purest form. Not romance. Maybe hints at it. Maybe, if one looked closely, they'd find seeds of budding romance or they'd find the memory of it.

But no one would need to press their nose to the glass to try and find the love.

It is clear as day.

Christmas lights blink from the tree in the middle of the room, the sky whirls with snowflakes the size of quarters and they love one another, unconditionally.

* * *

_Sometimes the only way around it  
Is to let love do its work  
And let it hurt  
Yeah, let it hurt_

* * *

**FIN**


End file.
